Noise Read Online Free

back. The store was still making noise.
    It sounded like traffic laws in the nearby intersection were losing force. Cars had become weapons, and some sounded stronger than others.
    “Stop screaming,” I told her, dazed on my back. “Just … stop.”
    Levi shuffled over.
    “Christ, you didn’t even
ask
her,” he said.
    I turned to look at her. She had stopped screaming, and her eyes were trying to look up, inside her forehead.
    “Well, neither did you,” I said.
    …
Do not panic…
.
    “Jesus. Jesus.”
    Jesus.
    “What’s she got?” I managed to ask, sitting up. In the darkness, her blood looked like the oil oblonging the parking spaces.
    Adam was touching her, tentatively, like she was a wounded animal. Something he intended to study, but not yet. Not while it could still spit and spray and blast adrenaline into his stream.
    “Levi,” I said, …
best effected through …
not looking at her, “
what’s she got?
”
    Thy shld tk nw nms
.
    “Uh … uh”—he rummaged—“diapers, matches …”
    …
disguise
.
    I started gathering things and shoving them into my pack.
    “Okay, look at me now.”
    “What?”
    “Now you can look at me.”
    He stopped and looked. The folds around his eyes had cleared themselves of polish.
    “I think … I think we need to always look. At each other. Afterward.”
    He looked back down. “Okay.”
    When we’d sold candy, to raise money for cleats and flags and dues to the YMCA, I had practiced in the mirror.
    “Hello.”
    Morally …
    “I’m selling candy to raise
    …
these Outsiders …
    “money for my T-ball team, the Yellow Jackets.
    …are natural enemies
.
    “Would you like to buy something?”
    …
They are predators
.
    In the end, though, you bought all the candy yourself. Or your parents did. You took what you needed to fulfill the team’s need. You paid.
    •   •   •

    The girl was a brunette, or red-haired. The shock had gotten her. She was still breathing, but her eyes were closed now.
    I stood up and leveled the point of my sword at her throat.
    “We don’t want to hurt you,” I practiced.
    I couldn’t remember what to say next. What we had agreed to. People ran around me, hammering the oily pavement in the shoes they’d thought best for sprinting through the End of All Things.
    Levi stood up, sword down. Playing Bad Cop.
    “But we need what you have,” he said.
    I looked at him, waited until he looked back. “You can give it to us.”
    “Or we can take it.”
    “Do another one,” I told him. “I need you to do another one.”
    He looked around, crouching by reflex. An insect poked mid-thorax. “Wait, are other people … is anyone else killing?”
    “We don’t want to kill anyone,” I said. “Remember?”
    We stacked our cards. Cross-legged in sweatpants. A Saturday afternoon at Jon’s house. We traded what our parents had bought for us and checked values in our price guide, hoping to sneak bad deals past each other.
    We took our turns at bat, wincing before we even reached the T. Afraid of it, of contact. It always hurt to connect the aluminum bat with the ball, and we couldn’t hear our dads through our regulation safety helmets. They were usually too big, but they still pinched the cartilage in your ears. Things still hurt when you kept
your eye on the ball
, and did someone say
good hustle?
You couldn’t be sure, standing before the T.
    This would hurt, so you couldn’t
be yourself
. You couldn’t
most importantly, have fun
. You were not yourself in your T-ball disguise. You were a Yellow Jacket.
    There is no I in team
.
    The ringing in your ears is not what you think it is.

THE BOOK:

    “TWO”

    (cont’d)

[3] (i) If, conversely, your Place is situated far from any urban center, is relatively inaccessible, and has available resources, prepare as much as possible as far in advance as possible.
    I.

    “PLAN”

[1] (i) You will need a Plan. (ii) This Plan must include a Place, a Group, and an Event Exit