Julian Kalli's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Three days after the stage, Julian met Venie behind a row of dead hedges at the edge of an empty lot. She had six names. He had four. Ten people, if everyone came. But ten people made noise, and noise carried, and the patrols had doubled since Monday. Julian had walked past two officers on the way over. One had watched his guitar case until he turned the corner. "We need a place," Venie said. "By Thursday." "I know." Julian pulled his jacket tighter. "Someone hums in the wrong alley, we're done before we start." Venie thought for a moment, then pointed past the lot to a sagging wooden shed half-swallowed by weeds. The roof dipped. The door hung crooked on one hinge. "My uncle used it for tools. He's dead two years. Nobody checks." She walked over and pushed the door. It scraped open. Inside smelled like old sawdust. The walls were thick. Julian clapped once. The sound stopped at the boards and went nowhere. He clapped again, harder. Still nothing leaked out. He stepped back into the grass and listened. A patrol car rolled past the far street. The officer inside did not turn his head. They worked through the afternoon. Julian dragged in a crate of instruments they had built in secret, taped drums, a length of pipe strung with wire, two whistles carved from scrap. Venie swept the floor and stuffed rags into the gaps between boards. They hid the crate under a tarp behind a stack of broken shelves. Then they walked the lot. Venie knelt by a bare patch of dirt twenty steps from the door and pressed her thumb into the ground. She shaped a small music note in the packed earth, the size of her hand. "They'll know," she said. "Nobody else will." Julian looked at it. From the street it was nothing. From the grass it was a sign. They were latching the shed when boots crunched on gravel behind them. Julian froze. An officer in a pressed blue uniform stood at the lot's edge, hands behind his back, watching. "What's in there?" he called. Venie answered before Julian could breathe. "Garden stuff. Our grandfather's." She held up a rusted trowel she had grabbed from a shelf. The officer stared a long second. Then he nodded once and kept walking. Julian's cyborg arm had locked at the elbow. He forced it loose. They waited until the boots faded. Venie wiped her hands on her jeans. "Thursday," she said. "Eight o'clock. I'll tell mine the mark, you tell yours." Julian nodded. He looked at the shed, then at the small note pressed into the dirt. He had a room now. He had a sign. He had four days to get ten people inside without one of them being followed. The fear in his chest did not leave, but it changed shape. It had walls around it now.