Read Online Where by Kit Reed - Free Book Online Page A

Russians.” “The Chinese.” “’Od damn scientists.”
    â€œTowelheads, dammit,” Rebel hollers, him with the battery of AK-47s in his armory back home, along with handguns and double-barreled shotguns that could take down a roaring bear. “WE HAVE TO ARM OURSELVES.”
    â€œWipe ’em out.”
    Ray raises his arm and brings it down like a starter’s flag. “Enough!”
    â€œKill ’em, whoever they are.” “String ’em up.” “Shoot ’em dead.” “Kill ’em all.” “Blow the place to hell.” Rage spills over, reason obscured by the hundred voices that rise and overlap, melding into a mass buddabuddabudda that escalates, filling the room.
    Until Gene Goethe, who hardly ever says anything, jumps up on one of the wooden benches, shouting loud enough to be heard over the fury, “Now, how are we going to do that?”
    Rebel’s voice overtakes his. “STORM THE ARMORY.”
    Then Jim Deloach drags Gene down off the bench and punches him in the gut and Rebel head-butts Jim, knocking him flat.
    It’s too late to reason. It’s too late to do anything. We’re stretched so thin that no one can say what we’re thinking. Dislocated in time and space like this, nobody thinks. When systems break down and something has to give, what crumples is the personnel. Seeing Delroy Root’s brother Errol going at Rebel Dawson over who will climb that pulpit and take over clinches it. Errol rips out Rebel’s earring and the first blood flies.
    Now our friends and neighbors morph into a mob. Fear and outrage collide and everybody in that hall sprouts fangs and claws. Men and women take sides, tugging back and forth over procedure until Ray’s meeting explodes in a screaming free-for-all that ends in sobbing and smashed teeth, torn clothes and recriminations that rage on until everybody Ray and I had gathered to identify the problem and help us solve it is exhausted. Defeated by the explosion of frustration and raw fury, they can’t organize themselves to strike another blow, unless …
    Wait. The air changed. What did it? An infusion we don’t know about or an unexpected chill? It’s as if some new element entered the room and shut these people down.
    Stunned by the sudden silence, people I know and people I hardly know tuck their butts under them like whipped hyenas and turn tail. Defeated, they go slinking off to their appointed homes, leaving Ray and me to— what?
    At the end, alone in the wreckage, Ray and I study the mess. Our pristine meeting hall doesn’t look so sterile anymore, what with all the snot and blood spots on the jigsaw of overturned white benches, and the plank that Errol broke when he threw down Rebel Dawson and stomped him. Our busted meeting is beyond fixing. The story is spelled out in bodily fluids smeared on the brilliant white walls.
    In his time, Ray’s seen everything, but tonight he’s shaken. “We can’t stay here.” He means it on a dozen levels.
    I’m probably more messed up than he is, so I hit on the one part of tonight that I can work with. “Not like this.”
    â€œAnd we can’t leave it like this.”
    â€œNot if we want to get back to our lives. Oh, Ray. What are we going to do?”
    â€œWhatever it is, we can’t do it alone.”
    â€œAgreed.”
    â€œWe need another meeting.” He didn’t have to say, “It’s not about the cleanup.”
    â€œI know.”
    He says, “We can’t leave it like that.”
    â€œWhy not? You saw what they were like.” In this new life, people we thought we knew turned into something else. Howling with rage, they took on like werewolves in the middle of the change, vicious and out of control.
    In fact, by the time he and I sneak out hours later, with one exception every bench in the meeting hall is back in place, every white