Jericho Iteration by Allen Steele Read Free Book Online Page A

trespassing on the Muny had been the last straw. Steve Estes, the council member whose political ambitions were only slightly outweighed by his ego, was making good on his rhetoric.
    No time to ponder local politics now. More Ospreys were arriving. The first one was already on the ground, its rear door cranking down to let out a squad of ERA troopers. The air stank of tear gas; people were rushing around on either side of us, threatening to trample us as they fled from the soldiers. Already I could hear screams from the area closest to the landing site of the first Osprey and the hollow ka-chunng! of Mace canisters being fired into the mob.
    Escape through the parking lot was out of the question; already I could hear the engine roar of LAV-25 Piranhas approaching from the roadway on the other side of the hill, their multiple tires mowing down the makeshift barricades squatters had thrown up around the Muny. In a few minutes we’d be nailed by tear gas, water cannons, webs, or rubber bullets.
    A steep, wooded embankment lay to the right of the amphitheater. “That way!” I yelled to the woman. “Down the hill!”
    “No!” she shouted, yanking her hand free from mine. “I gotta go somewhere!”
    “You’ll—”
    “Shaddup! Listen to me!” She grabbed my shoulders and shouted in my face. “Tell Tiernan—”
    Full-auto gunfire from behind us. More screams. I couldn’t tell whether the troopers were firing live rounds, and I wasn’t in the mood for sticking around to find out. The woman glanced over her shoulder, then her eyes snapped back to me again.
    “Tell Tiernan to meet me at Clancy’s on Geyer Street!” she yelled. “Tomorrow at eight! Tell him not to trust any other messages he gets! You got that?”
    “Who are you?” I shouted back at her. “What the hell’s going on?”
    For the briefest moment she seemed uncertain, as if wanting to tell me everything in the middle of a full-scale riot and yet unable to trust her own instincts. Then she pulled me closer until her lips touched my ear.
    “Ruby fulcrum,” she whispered.
    “Ruby what?”
    “Ruby fulcrum!” she repeated, louder and more urgently now. “Tiernan will know what I mean. Remember, Clancy’s at eight.” She shoved me away. “Now get out of here!”
    Then she was gone, turning around to dash into the panic-stricken mob, disappearing into the night as suddenly as she had appeared. I caught a final glimpse of the woman as her jacket hood fell back, exposing a few hints of gray in her short-cropped hair.
    Then she was gone.
    I ran in the opposite direction, battering my way through the crowd until I was out of the parking lot. I dashed across the sidewalk and down the embankment beside the high concrete walls of the Muny. Few people followed me; most of the squatters had stayed behind to wage futile battle against the ERA troopers, protecting what little they could still call home.
    I slipped and skittered and fell down the muddy slope, blinded by smoke and darkness, deafened by the sound of helicopters, my face lashed by low tree branches as I tripped over fallen limbs. As I neared the bottom of the hill I heard the gurgle of a rain-swollen drainage ditch and veered away from it; I didn’t need to get more wet than I already was.
    I can barely recall how I escaped from the riot; my flight from the Muny comes to me only in snatches. Falling on my face several times. Grabbing my jacket pocket to make sure that I hadn’t lost Joker, feeling vague reassurance when I felt its small mass. Jogging down Government Road around the lake, passing the old 1904 World’s Fair Pavilion, slowing down to catch my breath and then, in the next instant, spotting the headlights of more armored cars approaching from the opposite direction and ducking off the road into the woods. Hearing monkeys howling in the treetops above me. Crashing through a tent village erected on the fairway of what used to be the municipal golf course, hearing babies screaming,