Another squirt of lotion.
“Even here,” said Susan, “at the end of everything, you’ve been talking about using the lotion again. Using it more. Trying to save a world that will only be saved when you. Stop. Screwing. It. Up.” Every word brought another spray of white lotion. She spoke to her followers. “Bring them up.”
The revolutionaries muscled the bound prisoners onto the makeshift stage of the elevator housing, and Lyle got his first good look at them. It was the same two cops he’d seen before, officers Woolf and Luckesen, still in their uniforms and looking like they hadn’t changed in weeks. ReBirth had apparently been working on them the entire time, for their faces were darker, their foreheads more sloped, and their brows more prominent. Their posture was wrong, almost simian, and hair had begun to grow on almost every inch of exposed skin. Lyle realized too late what they were turning into, and the realization took all the strength from his limbs; he clung to Lilly’s shoulder like a child on the edge of a fathomless pool.
“Monkeys,” he said out loud. He looked up. “You’re turning us into monkeys.”
Susan extended her lotion bottle, ready to squeeze a blast of chimpanzee DNA in his face like she’d done with the others, but stopped at the last minute. “How long have you been a Lyle?”
“Forty-two years,” he said softly. “It’s me, Susan.”
Her face was twisted halfway between happiness and anger. “You did this.”
“You and I both did it,” he said. “You know we didn’t mean to.”
The sound of gunfire echoed over the roof, and the noise seemed to snap her back out of whatever brief reverie had caused her to pause. Susan’s face resolved into a hard, cruel expression Lyle had never seen before. “Don’t blame me.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” said Lyle.
She raised the lotion bottle again, but her chest blossomed in a spray of red blood and she collapsed to the roof, tumbling off the edge of the elevator housing onto the frightened crowd below. Her plastic bottle burst at the impact, spraying out lotion like a ReBirth grenade.
Someone was shooting, dozens of someones, and the roof erupted in screaming again, people pushing and shoving and trying to get away, trying to find shelter from the lotion, trying to wipe it off on the only thing they had, which was each other. Lyle and Lilly pressed themselves to the farthest fringes of the group, doing everything they could to avoid the lotion.
The revolutionaries were shooting at the other end of the roof, and Lyle could see that more UN soldiers had appeared there, fighting their way up from below and taking the rioters from behind. He thought he caught a glimpse of General Blauwitz, but he was too busy ducking the violent mob to see clearly.
“This way,” said Lilly, and pulled him toward the west side of the elevator housing, and the narrow walkway that ran between it and the edge of the roof. Susan’s body, and the circle of ReBirth around it, had created a small clearing at the wall, and Cynthia was already crouching there, pulling something from her purse. Two revolutionaries stood at the corner, firing down the walkway to the soldiers on the far side and ignoring the frothing mob behind them.
Lyle stared at Susan’s body, too shocked to know how he felt.
“There’s an access hatch to the elevator shaft,” said Lilly. “I saw it when we ran through here before.”
“And a shootout between it and us,” said Lyle, trying to force himself out of shock. “No good.”
“So we get rid of them,” said Cynthia. She pulled a small handgun from her purse, clicked off the safety, and shot the two revolutionaries in the head. “There.”
Lyle gripped the wall for support. “I’m going to go back into shock now.”
“You carry a gun?” asked Lilly.
“You don’t?” asked Cynthia.
“If we’re going to go, let’s go,” said Lyle, and dove around the corner heedless of the gunfire. He found the access hatch and kicked it open; the door tumbled down into a bottomless black shaft.
“We need some delegates or it’s no good going anywhere,” said Cynthia, scanning the crowd for anyone important enough to save. “They’re our ticket to safety in Virginia.” A group of staff advisers and secretaries were crowding toward them, eager to escape through the hatch, but she held them off with her pistol. Lyle looked to the other end of the roof and saw soldiers and revolutionaries and men in suits all locked in battle. A new wave of revolutionaries boiling up from the staircase pushed the soldiers back, and Lyle found himself face-to-face with General Blauwitz and the delegate from Mexico, both armed with assault rifles.
“This building’s lost,” shouted Blauwitz. He saw the access hatch. “Get as many delegates as you can and make for the basement. There are tunnels into the city.”
“Already on it,” said Lyle, and nodded toward Cynthia, who had filtered the most important people out of the group trying to enter the walkway. She’d managed to collect Samoa, China, and India. Lyle crouched at the access hatch, wincing as a stray bullet clanged against the wall above his head, and offered the opening to Lilly. “Ladies first.”
“You’re damn right,” said Cynthia, pushing past Lilly and climbing into the hole. “If any of you bastards stepped in ReBirth I don’t want to get it on my hands.” She started down, and without her to hold them off the crowd surged into the narrow space, clamoring to escape through the hatch. Many of them were covered with lotion. Lyle helped Lilly in next, then followed after, easing in backward to the cold metal rungs of the maintenance ladder. He clung to the bars, not looking down, moving one rung at a time and trying not to think of the thirty-nine-story drop below him.
China came in above him, and after him another, but in the darkness Lyle couldn’t see who it was. He hoped it was another of the delegates. He continued down, one rung after another, remembering how hard it was to climb all these floors in the first place and wishing that they could have had this showdown on a lower floor. He looked up, nearly three floors now, and saw a long line of people on the ladder with a pale square of moonlight at the top. There were shouts, and a scream, and a body came tumbling past him. He couldn’t see if it was a man or a woman. It thumped loudly on something close below him, and he heard another shout of surprise from Lilly. He ventured a look down, praying she hadn’t been knocked from the ladder, and saw instead that she and Cynthia were standing on the roof of an elevator. The body had landed on the ceiling hatch they’d been trying to open.
Lyle hurried down the last few rungs and helped move the body aside, touching it gingerly in case it was contaminated with the chimpanzee lotion. It was a man in a suit, and when they managed to open the ceiling hatch light flooded out to reveal him as the corpse of Estonia.
“Ambassador Rebane,” said Cynthia. “You’re in the way.” There was a gap in the iron framework that led to the neighboring shaft, and she shoved him through it. He disappeared almost instantly into the darkness. The Chinese delegate had reached them by now, and India close behind. “This should be the thirty-fifth floor,” said Cynthia. “Let’s go.” Lyle and China each grabbed one of her arms and helped lower her into the elevator car, and as she ran to the control panel they lowered Lilly in after her. The delegate from Mexico joined them next, and as Lyle and Russia helped India through the opening Samoa reached the bottom of the ladder behind them.
“Who’s next?” asked Lyle.
“The general is after me,” said Samoa. “And after that I don’t know. One of the delegate’s assistants, but I don’t recognize the language.”
“Tell the general to jump,” shouted Cynthia. “I’m pretty sure this thing works.”
“She can’t be serious,” said Mexico, grabbing a cable.
“General, jump!” Lyle shouted quickly. “She’s always serious!” A chorus of pleading screams answered back, and two black forms detached from the ladder and fell through the air. The general fell only a few feet; the man above him fell much farther, and broke his ankle with an audible snap as he landed. The third person up on the ladder jumped, as well, but a moment too late, for Cynthia hit the button and the elevator launched itself down as the latecomer was still falling. He fell faster than the elevator, but only just, and caught up with them five stories later with a sickening crunch that broke the roof of the car. Lyle and Samoa both slipped through the sudden gaps in the structure, trapping their feet and legs in the twisted metal.
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open, only to be immediately strafed with gunfire. Lyle was still wedged in place, trying to extricate his foot without slicing it open on the metal edges, and couldn’t see a thing. He heard a few quick shots that could have been Cynthia’s gun, and General Blauwitz and the Mexican delegate used the moment to drop through the hatch and return fire with their heavier rifles. Lyle strained against the metal, feeling it tear through his pants and lacerate his skin. The Chinese delegate helped him, then did the same for Samoa. The man with the broken ankle lay beside them, moaning softly in a language none of them could understand. Lyle looked through the open hatch and saw splashes of blood all over the elevator car, but he couldn’t tell who they belonged to. The gunfire moved farther away, retreating down a hall, and Cynthia called up for Lyle to hurry. Lyle lowered himself into the car, finding the Indian delegate’s body slumped and bloody in the corner.
“They got him as soon as the doors opened,” said Cynthia. Lyle looked around wildly, and saw Lilly in the hallway beyond, holding a looted submachine gun with wide, terrified eyes. He walked toward her, but Cynthia shouted behind him. “Who the hell is that?” Lyle looked back to see the Samoan delegate lowering the broken assistant through the hatch.
“I don’t know who he is,” said Samoa. “Just grab him.”
“Leave him,” said Cynthia. “He’s not important enough to slow us down.”
“I’m not leaving him,” said Samoa. “And I am important enough to slow you down, so grab him.” Cynthia didn’t move, so Lyle caught the dangling man and held him while Samoa dropped down after. Samoa slung the now-unconscious man over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and they moved out into the hall. Lilly looked at Lyle with wide eyes; she didn’t seem capable of firing her gun effectively, but didn’t seem interested in giving it up, either. They were in some kind of service tunnel beneath the complex, and met up with Blauwitz and Mexico around the next corner.
The general made a quick count of their group. “This is all we have?”
