Chapter 21

This chapter is dedicated to Pages Books in Toronto, Canada. Long a fix-ture on the bleedingly trendy Queen Street West strip, Pages is locatedover the road from CityTV and just a few doors down from the oldBakka store where I worked. We at Bakka loved having Pages down thestreet from us: what we were to science fiction, they were to everythingelse: hand-picked material representing the stuff you'd never find else-where, the stuff you didn't know you were looking for until you saw itthere. Pages also has one of the best news-stands I've ever seen, row onrow of incredible magazines and zines from all over the world.
Pages Books: 256 Queen St W, Toronto, ON M5V 1Z8 Canada +1 416598 1447They left me and Barbara alone in the room then, and I used the work-ing shower head to rinse off — I was suddenly embarrassed to becovered in piss and barf. When I finished, Barbara was in tears.
"Your parents —" she began.
I felt like I might throw up again. God, my poor folks. What they musthave gone through.
"Are they here?""No," she said. "It's complicated," she said.
"What?""You're still under arrest, Marcus. Everyone here is. They can't justsweep in and throw open the doors. Everyone here is going to have to beprocessed through the criminal justice system. It could take, well, itcould take months.""I'm going to have to stay here for months?"She grabbed my hands. "No, I think we're going to be able to get youarraigned and released on bail pretty fast. But pretty fast is a relativeterm. I wouldn't expect anything to happen today. And it's not going to287be like those people had it. It will be humane. There will be real food. Nointerrogations. Visits from your family.
"Just because the DHS is out, it doesn't mean that you get to just walkout of here. What's happened here is that we're getting rid of the bizarro-world version of the justice system they'd instituted and replacing it withthe old system. The system with judges, open trials and lawyers.
"So we can try to get you transferred to a juvie facility on the main-land, but Marcus, those places can be really rough. Really, really rough.
This might be the best place for you until we get you bailed out."Bailed out. Of course. I was a criminal — I hadn't been charged yet,but there were bound to be plenty of charges they could think of. It waspractically illegal just to think impure thoughts about the government.
She gave my hands another squeeze. "It sucks, but this is how it has tobe. The point is, it's over. The Governor has thrown the DHS out of theState, dismantled every checkpoint. The Attorney General has issuedwarrants for any law-enforcement officers involved in 'stress interroga-tions' and secret imprisonments. They'll go to jail, Marcus, and it's be-cause of what you did."I was numb. I heard the words, but they hardly made sense. Some-how, it was over, but it wasn't over.
"Look," she said. "We probably have an hour or two before this allsettles down, before they come back and put you away again. What doyou want to do? Walk on the beach? Get a meal? These people had an in-credible staff room — we raided it on the way in. Gourmet all the way."At last a question I could answer. "I want to find Ange. I want to findDarryl."I tried to use a computer I found to look up their cell-numbers, but itwanted a password, so we were reduced to walking the corridors, callingout their names. Behind the cell-doors, prisoners screamed back at us, orcried, or begged us to let them go. They didn't understand what had justhappened, couldn't see their former guards being herded onto the docksin plastic handcuffs, taken away by California state SWAT teams.
"Ange!" I called over the din, "Ange Carvelli! Darryl Glover! It'sMarcus!"We'd walked the whole length of the cell-block and they hadn'tanswered. I felt like crying. They'd been shipped overseas — they werein Syria or worse. I'd never see them again.
288I sat down and leaned against the corridor wall and put my face in myhands. I saw Severe Haircut Woman's face, saw her smirk as she askedme for my login. She had done this. She would go to jail for it, but thatwasn't enough. I thought that when I saw her again, I might kill her. Shedeserved it.
"Come on," Barbara said, "Come on, Marcus. Don't give up. There'smore around here, come on."She was right. All the doors we'd passed in the cellblock were old,rusting things that dated back to when the base was first built. But at thevery end of the corridor, sagging open, was a new high-security door asthick as a dictionary. We pulled it open and ventured into the dark cor-ridor within.
There were four more cell-doors here, doors without bar codes. Eachhad a small electronic keypad mounted on it.
"Darryl?" I said. "Ange?""Marcus?"It was Ange, calling out from behind the furthest door. Ange, myAnge, my angel.
"Ange!" I cried. "It's me, it's me!""Oh God, Marcus," she choked out, and then it was all sobs.
I pounded on the other doors. "Darryl! Darryl, are you here?""I'm here." The voice was very small, and very hoarse. "I'm here. I'mvery, very sorry. Please. I'm very sorry."He sounded… broken. Shattered.
"It's me, D," I said, leaning on his door. "It's Marcus. It's over — theyarrested the guards. They kicked the Department of Homeland Securityout. We're getting trials, open trials. And we get to testify against them.""I'm sorry," he said. "Please, I'm so sorry."The California patrolmen came to the door then. They still had theircamera rolling. "Ms Stratford?" one said. He had his faceplate up and helooked like any other cop, not like my savior. Like someone come to lockme up.
"Captain Sanchez," she said. "We've located two of the prisoners of in-terest here. I'd like to see them released and inspect them for myself.""Ma'am, we don't have access codes for those doors yet," he said.
289She held up her hand. "That wasn't the arrangement. I was to havecomplete access to this facility. That came direct from the Governor, sir.
We aren't budging until you open these cells." Her face was perfectlysmooth, without a single hint of give or flex. She meant it.
The Captain looked like he needed sleep. He grimaced. "I'll see what Ican do," he said.
They did manage to open the cells, finally, about half an hour later. Ittook three tries, but they eventually got the right codes entered, match-ing them to the arphids on the ID badges they'd taken off the guardsthey'd arrested.
They got into Ange's cell first. She was dressed in a hospital gown,open at the back, and her cell was even more bare than mine had been —just padding all over, no sink or bed, no light. She emerged blinking intothe corridor and the police camera was on her, its bright lights in herface. Barbara stepped protectively between us and it. Ange stepped tent-atively out of her cell, shuffling a little. There was something wrong withher eyes, with her face. She was crying, but that wasn't it.
"They drugged me," she said. "When I wouldn't stop screaming for alawyer."That's when I hugged her. She sagged against me, but she squeezedback, too. She smelled stale and sweaty, and I smelled no better. I neverwanted to let go.
That's when they opened Darryl's cell.
He had shredded his paper hospital gown. He was curled up, naked,in the back of the cell, shielding himself from the camera and our stares. Iran to him.
"D," I whispered in his ear. "D, it's me. It's Marcus. It's over. Theguards have been arrested. We're going to get bail, we're going home."He trembled and squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm sorry," he whispered,and turned his face away.
They took me away then, a cop in body-armor and Barbara, took meback to my cell and locked the door, and that's where I spent the night.
I don't remember much about the trip to the courthouse. They had mechained to five other prisoners, all of whom had been in for a lot longerthan me. One only spoke Arabic — he was an old man, and he trembled.
290The others were all young. I was the only white one. Once we had beengathered on the deck of the ferry, I saw that nearly everyone on TreasureIsland had been one shade of brown or another.
I had only been inside for one night, but it was too long. There was alight drizzle coming down, normally the sort of thing that would makeme hunch my shoulders and look down, but today I joined everyone elsein craning my head back at the infinite gray sky, reveling in the stingingwet as we raced across the bay to the ferry-docks.
They took us away in buses. The shackles made climbing into thebuses awkward, and it took a long time for everyone to load. No onecared. When we weren't struggling to solve the geometry problem of sixpeople, one chain, narrow bus-aisle, we were just looking around at thecity around us, up the hill at the buildings.
All I could think of was finding Darryl and Ange, but neither were inevidence. It was a big crowd and we weren't allowed to move freelythrough it. The state troopers who handled us were gentle enough, butthey were still big, armored and armed. I kept thinking I saw Darryl inthe crowd, but it was always someone else with that same beaten,hunched look that he'd had in his cell. He wasn't the only broken one.
At the courthouse, they marched us into interview rooms in ourshackle group. An ACLU lawyer took our information and asked us afew questions — when she got to me, she smiled and greeted me byname — and then led us into the courtroom before the judge. He wore anactual robe, and seemed to be a in a good mood.
The deal seemed to be that anyone who had a family member to postbail could go free, and everyone else got sent to prison. The ACLU law-yer did a lot of talking to the judge, asking for a few more hours whilethe prisoners' families were rounded up and brought to the court-house.
The judge was pretty good about it, but when I realized that some ofthese people had been locked up since the bridge blew, taken for dead bytheir families, without trial, subjected to interrogation, isolation, torture— I wanted to just break the chains myself and set everyone free.
When I was brought before the judge, he looked down at me and tookoff his glasses. He looked tired. The ACLU lawyer looked tired. Thebailiffs looked tired. Behind me, I could hear a sudden buzz of conversa-tion as my name was called by the bailiff. The judge rapped his gavelonce, without looking away from me. He scrubbed at his eyes.
"Mr Yallow," he said, "the prosecution has identified you as a flightrisk. I think they have a point. You certainly have more, shall we say,291history, than the other people here. I am tempted to hold you over for tri-al, no matter how much bail your parents are prepared to post."My lawyer started to say something, but the judge silenced her with alook. He scrubbed at his eyes.
"Do you have anything to say?""I had the chance to run," I said. "Last week. Someone offered to takeme away, get me out of town, help me build a new identity. Instead Istole her phone, escaped from our truck, and ran away. I turned over herphone — which had evidence about my friend, Darryl Glover, on it — toa journalist and hid out here, in town.""You stole a phone?""I decided that I couldn't run. That I had to face justice — that my free-dom wasn't worth anything if I was a wanted man, or if the city was stillunder the DHS. If my friends were still locked up. That freedom for mewasn't as important as a free country.""But you did steal a phone."I nodded. "I did. I plan on giving it back, if I ever find the young wo-man in question.""Well, thank you for that speech, Mr Yallow. You are a very wellspoken young man." He glared at the prosecutor. "Some would say avery brave man, too. There was a certain video on the news this morn-ing. It suggested that you had some legitimate reason to evade the au-thorities. In light of that, and of your little speech here, I will grant bail,but I will also ask the prosecutor to add a charge of Misdemeanor PettyTheft to the count, as regards the matter of the phone. For this, I expectanother $50,000 in bail."He banged his gavel again, and my lawyer gave my hand a squeeze.
He looked down at me again and re-seated his glasses. He haddandruff, there on the shoulders of his robe. A little more rained downas his glasses touched his wiry, curly hair.
"You can go now, young man. Stay out of trouble."I turned to go and someone tackled me. It was Dad. He literally liftedme off my feet, hugging me so hard my ribs creaked. He hugged me theway I remembered him hugging me when I was a little boy, when he'dspin me around and around in hilarious, vomitous games of airplane292that ended with him tossing me in the air and catching me and squeez-ing me like that, so hard it almost hurt.
A set of softer hands pried me gently out of his arms. Mom. She heldme at arm's length for a moment, searching my face for something, notsaying anything, tears streaming down her face. She smiled and it turnedinto a sob and then she was holding me too, and Dad's arm encircled usboth.
When they let go, I managed to finally say something. "Darryl?""His father met me somewhere else. He's in the hospital.""When can I see him?""It's our next stop," Dad said. He was grim. "He doesn't —" Hestopped. "They say he'll be OK," he said. His voice was choked.
"How about Ange?""Her mother took her home. She wanted to wait here for you, but… "I understood. I felt full of understanding now, for how all the familiesof all the people who'd been locked away must feel. The courtroom wasfull of tears and hugs, and even the bailiffs couldn't stop it.
"Let's go see Darryl," I said. "And let me borrow your phone?"I called Ange on the way to the hospital where they were keepingDarryl — San Francisco General, just down the street from us — and ar-ranged to see her after dinner. She talked in a hurried whisper. Her momwasn't sure whether to punish her or not, but Ange didn't want to temptfate.
There were two state troopers in the corridor where Darryl was beingheld. They were holding off a legion of reporters who stood on tiptoe tosee around them and get pictures. The flashes popped in our eyes likestrobes, and I shook my head to clear it. My parents had brought meclean clothes and I'd changed in the back seat, but I still felt gross, evenafter scrubbing myself in the court-house bathrooms.
Some of the reporters called my name. Oh yeah, that's right, I was fam-ous now. The state troopers gave me a look, too — either they'd recog-nized my face or my name when the reporters called it out.
Darryl's father met us at the door of his hospital room, speaking in awhisper too low for the reporters to hear. He was in civvies, the jeansand sweater I normally thought of him wearing, but he had his serviceribbons pinned to his breast.
293"He's sleeping," he said. "He woke up a little while ago and he startedcrying. He couldn't stop. They gave him something to help him sleep."He led us in, and there was Darryl, his hair clean and combed, sleep-ing with his mouth open. There was white stuff at the corners of hismouth. He had a semi-private room, and in the other bed there was anolder Arab-looking guy, in his 40s. I realized it was the guy I'd beenchained to on the way off of Treasure Island. We exchanged embarrassedwaves.
Then I turned back to Darryl. I took his hand. His nails had beenchewed to the quick. He'd been a nail-biter when he was a kid, but he'dkicked the habit when we got to high school. I think Van talked him outof it, telling him how gross it was for him to have his fingers in hismouth all the time.
I heard my parents and Darryl's dad take a step away, drawing thecurtains around us. I put my face down next to his on the pillow. He hada straggly, patchy beard that reminded me of Zeb.
"Hey, D," I said. "You made it. You're going to be OK."He snored a little. I almost said, "I love you," a phrase I'd only said toone non-family-member ever, a phrase that was weird to say to anotherguy. In the end, I just gave his hand another squeeze. Poor Darryl.