a clicking sound. His lips wordlessly working, he looked at Sara with pleading eyes.
Lila was tugging her by the arm. “We need to hurry.”
She didn’t have to say it again. More bodies—the splashes of blood and startled postures and expressions of surprise in unseeing eyes—flowed past. It was a massacre. Was it possible that Lila had done this? They came to the end of the hall, where the heavy steel door stood open. A col lay beside it, shot in the head.
“Get her out of the building,” Lila commanded. “It’s the last thing I’ll ask of you. Do whatever you have to.”
Sara understood that she was speaking of Kate. “Lila, what are you doing?”
“What should have been done long ago.” A look of peace had come into her face; her eyes glowed with warmth. “It will all be over soon, Dani.”
Sara hesitated. “My name’s not Dani.”
“I thought perhaps it wasn’t. Tell me.”
“It’s Sara.”
Lila nodded slowly, as if agreeing that this was the right name for her to have. She took Sara’s hand.
“You will be a good mother to her, Sara,” she said, and squeezed. “I know it. Now run.”
A hush fell over the crowd as Guilder stepped onto the field, all seventy thousand faces swiveling to look at him. He stood still a moment, drinking in the stillness as his eyes traveled the grandstands. He would make a humble entrance, like a priest’s. Time seemed to stretch as he walked to the platform. Who knew it could take so long to cross fifty yards? The silence around him seemed to deepen with every step.
He arrived at the platform. He gazed out upon the crowd, first one side of the field, then the other. His hand slipped to his waist and located the toggle.
“All rise for the singing of the anthem.”
Nothing happened. Had he hit the right button? He glanced toward Suresh, who was standing on the sidelines, making a frantic rolling motion with his hand.
“I said, please rise.”
Begrudgingly, the crowd took to its feet. “Homeland, our Homeland,” Guilder began to sing, “we pledge our lives to thee …”
Our labors do we offer, without recompense or fee. Homeland, our Homeland, a nation rises here. Safety, hope, security, from sea to shining sea …
With a sinking feeling, Guilder realized that almost nobody else was singing. He heard a few isolated voices here and there—HR personnel and, of course, the staff, manfully croaking the words from the fifty-yard line—but this only heightened the impression that the crowd, basically, was on strike.
Homeland, our Homeland, of peace and plenty fair. The light of heaven shines upon your beauty rich and rare. One mind! One soul! Your love is all we see. Let all combine with heart and hand: one Homeland, strong and free!
The song didn’t end so much as turn a corner and fall down. Not a good sign at all. The first of several beads of sweat shot from his armpit to slither unimpeded down the length of his torso. Maybe he should have found somebody who could actually sing to warm up the crowd. Still, Guilder had a few things planned to engage the people fully in the evening’s transformational festivities. He cleared his throat, glanced toward Suresh once more, received the man’s approving nod, and spoke.
“I stand before you today on the eve of a new era—”
“Murderer!”
A buzz of voices shivered through the crowd. The shout had come from behind him, somewhere in the upper decks. Guilder spun around, blindly searching the sea of faces.
“Killer!”
The voice was a woman’s. Guilder saw her standing at the railing. She waved a fist madly in the air.
“You butcher!”
“Somebody arrest that woman!” Guilder barked into his microphone, too loudly.
A general catcalling erupted. Objects went sailing through the air, lobbing onto the field. The crowd was throwing the only thing it had. The crowd was throwing its shoes.
“Monster! Assassin! Torturer!”
Guilder was frozen. None of this was what he’d expected at all.
“Demon! Tyrant! Swine!”
“Devil! Satan! Fiend!”
If he didn’t do something fast, he’d lose them completely. He gave Suresh the signal; the switch was thrown. To an orchestrated explosion of colored light and smoke, the pickup carrying the woman in its bed bounded onto the field, the semi lumbering behind it. Simultaneously, the fire teams went racing around the edges of the field, igniting barrels of ethanol-soaked wood, making a flickering perimeter of flame. As the pickup halted at the platform, the semi turned in a wide circle and began to back up. The guards dropped the gate of