and they’d decided that I was an enemy.
She — Masha — became their ally.
“Hello, M1k3y,” she hissed in my ear, close as a lover. A shiver went up my back. She let go of my arm and I shook it out.
“Christ,” I said. “You!”
“Yes, me,” she said. “The gas is gonna come down in about two minutes. Let’s haul ass.”
“Ange — my girlfriend — is by the Founders’ Statue.”
Masha looked over the crowd. “No chance,” she said. “We try to make it there, we’re doomed. The gas is coming down in two minutes, in case you missed it the first time.”
I stopped moving. “I don’t go without Ange,” I said.
She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she shouted in my ear. “Your funeral.”
She began to push through the crowd, moving away, north, toward downtown. I continued to push for the Founders’ Statue. A second later, my arm was back in the terrible lock and I was being swung around and propelled forward.
“You know too much, jerk-off,” she said. “You’ve seen my face. You’re coming with me.”
I screamed at her, struggled till it felt like my arm would break, but she was pushing me forward. My sore foot was agony with every step, my shoulder felt like it would break.
With her using me as a battering ram, we made good progress through the crowd. The whine of the helicopters changed and she gave me a harder push. “RUN!” she yelled. “Here comes the gas!”
The crowd noise changed, too. The choking sounds and scream sounds got much, much louder. I’d heard that pitch of sound before. We were back in the park. The gas was raining down. I held my breath and
We cleared the crowd and she let go of my arm. I shook it out. I limped as fast as I could up the sidewalk as the crowd thinned and thinned. We were heading towards a group of DHS cops with riot shields and helmets and masks. As we drew near them, they moved to block us, but Masha held up a badge and they melted away like she was Obi Wan Kenobi, saying “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
“You goddamned
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I feel for you, buddy. I haven’t seen my boyfriend in months. He probably thinks I’m dead. Fortunes of war. We go back for your Ange, we’re dead. If we push on, we have a chance. So long as we have a chance, she has a chance. Those kids aren’t all going to Gitmo. They’ll probably take a few hundred in for questioning and send the rest home.”
We were moving up Market Street now, past the strip joints where the little encampments of bums and junkies sat, stinking like open toilets. Masha guided me to a little alcove in the shut door of one of the strip places. She stripped off her jacket and turned it inside out — the lining was a muted stripe pattern, and with the jacket’s seams reversed, it hung differently. She produced a wool hat from her pocket and pulled it over her hair, letting it form a jaunty, off-center peak. Then she took out some make-up remover wipes and went to work on her face and fingernails. In a minute, she was a different woman.
“Wardrobe change,” she said. “Now you. Lose the shoes, lose the jacket, lose the hat.” I could see her point. The cops would be looking very carefully at anyone who looked like they’d been a part of the VampMob. I ditched the hat entirely — I’d never liked ball caps. Then I jammed the jacket into my pack and got out a long-sleeved tee with a picture of Rosa Luxembourg on it and pulled it over my black tee. I let Masha wipe my makeup off and clean my nails and a minute later, I was clean.
“Switch off your phone,” she said. “You carrying any arphids?”
I had my student card, my ATM card, my Fast Pass. They all went into a silvered bag she held out, which I recognized as a radio-proof Faraday pouch. But as she put them in her pocket, I realized I’d just turned my ID over to her. If she was on the other side…
The magnitude of what had just happened began to sink in. In my mind, I’d pictured having Ange with me at this point. Ange would make it two against one. Ange would help me see if there was something amiss. If Masha wasn’t all she said she was.
“Put these pebbles in your shoes before you put them on —”
“It’s OK. I sprained my foot. No gait recognition program will spot me now.”
She nodded once, one pro to another, and slung her pack. I picked up mine and we moved. The total time for the changeover was less than a minute. We looked and walked like two different people.
She looked at her watch and shook her head. “Come on,” she said. “We have to make our rendezvous. Don’t think of running, either. You’ve got two choices now. Me, or jail. They’ll be analyzing the footage from that mob for days, but once they’re done, every face in it will go in a database. Our departure will be noted. We are both wanted criminals now.”
?She got us off Market Street on the next block, swinging back into the Tenderloin. I knew this neighborhood. This was where we’d gone hunting for an open WiFi access-point back on the day, playing Harajuku Fun Madness.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“We’re about to catch a ride,” she said. “Shut up and let me concentrate.”
We moved fast, and sweat streamed down my face from under my hair, coursed down my back and slid down the crack of my ass and my thighs. My foot was
It didn’t help that we were ploughing straight uphill, moving for the zone where the seedy Tenderloin gives way to the nosebleed real-estate values of Nob Hill. My breath came in ragged gasps. She moved us mostly up narrow alleys, using the big streets just to get from one alley to the next.
