Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,52

The first would say if the party was on or not. The next message would give a thirty-minute warning and the last would have where to go for the pick-up. There were four meeting points and you had to get there fast. The party was going to cap at 150 people. Not everyone was going. Common logic was that if you made it to a site within half an hour, you were going but anything after that was guesswork. The drivers who ferried people up to the party were all in contact with each other and kept a close head count.

I got the first message earlier in the day, around 2 PM. I was watching footage of bomb-sniffing dogs running through more pho places when it came in.

It said: YES LIKE YOKO…

I didn’t want to go to the party necessarily but I wanted to find Tamara and thought she might be there. I’d called her cell phone but it was forwarding. She might already be back in Breaker’s Rise. But Mirror said she might stay. If she had, I wanted to see her and ask her about my map and what the hell she thought she was doing.

Credence called about a candlelight march. They were going to retake media high ground with nightlights to prove how harmless they were. New fires were starting. The air was filled with static. Everything I touched shocked me and all I heard was crackling. Given these things, the sex party was like a reaction to a world that no longer existed, a Victorian ghost floating through the mustard gas. So I didn’t call Ben Hur Playland like Mirror asked. Instead, I watched smoke rise over the southern part of the city. Down along the river where it bent towards the sea I stared at the coastline like some kind of mystical destruction was about to take place, like we could turn the corner on the Grand Ravage right then and take it by surprise. West, toward the Roseway Bridge, the candlelight marchers were gathering. With the cloud cover gone it was going to get colder. Soon they would cross the river. In my mind I saw them line up. I saw them light candles, one to another down the row, cupping their hands to keep them from going out. I felt the bird crickets perched on the grass hill waiting for the march to move, jerking and cocking their heads. When it got dark and the emergency lamps turned on, I headed toward the bridge thinking that I could catch up with the march. It was just over a mile away and they would be moving slowly. I began to run. Alongside me the molten pennies in the Rat Queen’s fur radiated.

A quarter of a mile before the bridge the crickets had set up a barricade. I went south for a few blocks and saw that it stretched down to the cemetery. To the north it ran to the cement wall of the freeway. They had cordoned off the whole area. The marchers had no way to retreat and I couldn’t get to them.

My phone beeped. It was the second message.

SOON IT ALL STARTS ANEW.

It was dark now and all throughout New Honduras people were dressing for the party. I wondered if Tamara really would be there. Jimmy wouldn’t. I knew that. I tried to imagine her in Fair Prospect. She’d probably spent the afternoon in a lawn chair next to a bucket of fried chicken she wasn’t going to eat while everybody pretended she was going on a spontaneous vacation. Now, Jimmy, how do you say T-E-G-U-CCI—I missed her, but more than that, I missed the idea that there was a way out of this.

Behind me I heard a bullhorn. There was a riot police sweep coming, about a block up. I saw bird crickets fanned out in full gear. I had the map and the last Hive phone, Pluto, in my bag. I looked around for a place to stash it but it was all houses with clipped yards and ugly little rock gardens. There was nothing that was overgrown. I began walking fast, first south again, then southeast, ducking through the side streets and listening for the rustles of riot gear. A couple of times beams of light fell across sidewalks I had just walked over. They were moving in a wide semi-circle and I could feel it start to close.

My phone beeped again. It was the third text message.

I KNOW