Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(127)
Brady doesn’t like how this is playing out.
He had assumed that everyone would smoosh in at the same time, as they had at the Cleveland Indians game he’d gone to when he was eighteen, and the security guys would be overwhelmed, just giving everyone a cursory look and then passing them on. The concert staff letting in the crips and gooniebirds first is something he should have forseen, but didn’t.
There are at least a dozen men and women in blue uniforms with brown patches on their shoulders reading MAC SECURITY, and for the time being they have nothing to do but check out the handicapped folks rolling slowly past them. Brady notes with growing coldness that although they’re not checking the storage pockets on all the wheelchairs, they are indeed checking the pockets on some of them—every third or fourth, and sometimes two in a row. When the crips clear security, ushers dressed in ’Round Here tee-shirts are directing them toward the auditorium’s handicapped section.
He always knew he might be stopped at the security checkpoint, but had believed he could still take plenty of ’Round Here’s young fans with him if that happened. Another bad assumption. Flying glass might kill a few of those closest to the doors, but their bodies would also serve as a blast-shield.
Shit, he thinks. Still—I only got eight at City Center. I’m bound to do better than that.
He rolls forward, the picture of Frankie in his lap. The edge of the frame rests against the toggle-switch. The minute one of those security goons bends to look into the pockets on the sides of the wheelchair, Brady will press a hand down on the picture, the yellow lamp will turn green, and electricity will flow to the lead azide detonators nestled in the homemade explosive.
There are only a dozen wheelchairs ahead of him. Chilled air blows down on his hot skin. He thinks of City Center, and how the Trelawney bitch’s heavy car jounced and rocked as it ran over the people after he hit them and knocked them down. As if it were having an orgasm. He remembers the rubbery air inside the mask, and how he screamed with delight and triumph. Screamed until he was so hoarse he could hardly speak at all and had to tell his mother and Tones Frobisher at DE that he had come down with laryngitis.
Now there’s just ten wheelchairs between him and the checkpoint. One of the guards—probably the head honcho, since he’s the oldest and the only one wearing a hat—takes a backpack from a young girl who’s as bald as Brady himself. He explains something to her, and gives her a claim-check.
They’re going to catch me, Brady thinks coldly. They are, so get ready to die.
He is ready. Has been for some time now.
Eight wheelchairs between him and the checkpoint. Seven. Six. It’s like the countdown on his computers.
Then the singing starts outside, muffled at first.
“The sun, baby, the sun shines when you look at me . . . The moon, baby . . .”
When they hit the chorus, the sound swells to that of a cathedral choir: girls singing at the top of their lungs.
“I WANT TO LOVE YOU MY WAY . . . WE’LL DRIVE THE BEACHSIDE HIGHWAY . . .”
At that moment, the main doors swing open. Some girls cheer; most continue singing, and louder than ever.
“IT’S GONNA BE A NEW DAY . . . I’LL GIVE YOU KISSES ON THE MIDWAY!”
Chicks wearing ’Round Here tops and their first makeup pour in, their parents (mostly mommies) struggling to keep up and stay connected to their brats. The velvet rope between the main part of the corridor and the handicapped zone is knocked over and trampled underfoot. A beefy twelve- or thirteen-year-old with an ass the size of Iowa is shoved into the wheelchair ahead of Brady’s, and the girl inside it, who has a cheerfully pretty face and sticks for legs, is almost knocked over.
“Hey, watch it!” the wheelchair-girl’s mother shouts, but the fat bitch in the double-wide jeans is already gone, waving a ’Round Here pennant in one hand and her ticket in the other. Someone thumps into Brady’s chair, the picture shifts in his lap, and for one cold second he thinks they’re all going to go up in a white flash and a hail of steel bearings. When they don’t, he raises the picture enough to peer underneath, and sees the ready-lamp is still glowing yellow.
Close one, Brady thinks, and grins.
It’s happy confusion in the hallway, and all but one of the security guards who were checking the handicapped concertgoers move to do what they can with this new influx of crazed singing teens and preteens. The one guard who remains on the handicapped side of the corridor is a young woman, and she’s waving the wheelchairs through with barely a glance. As Brady approaches her he spots the guy in charge, Hat Honcho, standing on the far side of the corridor almost directly opposite. At six-three or so, he’s easy to see, because he towers over the girls, and his eyes never stop moving. In one hand he holds a piece of paper, which he glances down at every now and again.
“Show me your tickets and go,” the security woman says to the pretty wheelchair-girl and her mother. “Righthand door.”
Brady sees something interesting. The tall security guy in the hat grabs a guy of twenty or so who looks to be on his own and pulls him out of the scrum.
“Next!” the security woman calls to him. “Don’t hold up the line!”
Brady rolls forward, ready to push Frankie’s picture against the toggle-switch on Thing Two if she shows even a passing interest in the pockets of his wheelchair. The corridor is now wall to wall with pushing, singing girls, and his score will be a lot higher than thirty. If the corridor has to do, that will be fine.