Rock On (10 page)

“What I think of his performance?”

“Yeah. I’m not really in a position to judge. I don’t usually cover music.”

“Sounds like you want me to catch the show.”

“Sounds like you catch on fast, Lorcan.” She put her camera away and started toward the building. “Coming?”

I followed, joined the crowd, and entered the warehouse. A portable stage stood at the far end, covered with instruments: guitars, keyboards, turntables, drums.

“How big’s his band?”

“Not his. It’s all Silverheads. Anyone who wants to play can. They jam. He sings. It’s all improv. At least, that’s what I’ve read. This is my first time too.” She took my arm. “Stay close.” She had her camera out again, cupping it in her palm, clicking the shutter while some audience members took the stage. Like the rest of the milling crowd, they were a mix of working-class types: a woman in grunge flannel shouldering a Fender bass, a kid in a black T and work boots dropping a needle to cue a track, and a man in bib-overalls sliding into position behind a drum kit, testing the pedals:
Whuuuump! Whuuuump!
All of them looked as if they would have been right at home working in the warehouse. Perhaps some of the older ones had.

“Which one’s him?” I asked.

“Quicksilver? None of them. He doesn’t show till everyone’s playing.”

“He’s here somewhere?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Everything I’ve read claims he simply appears. The band starts playing, finds a groove, and then—”

The guitarist tapped his microphone. “How y’all doing tonight?”

Cheers.

“Ready to bring on Bobbie?”

More cheers, louder.

The guitar player glanced behind himself at the rest of the stage. “Looks like we still have a few positions available. Anyone for congas?”

The crowd shifted. Someone called a name. Then a woman in a postal uniform stepped forward, taking the stage to friendly applause.

The guitar man stepped aside, making room. “Good to see you, Shauna.”

“Good to be seen, Hank.” She gave each skin an easy slap—
Thonk! Thunk!
—then set her hands in place, ready to go.

Hank turned back toward the mic. “Y’all know how this works. You want to play, you come up. No need to ask. There’s room. Bobbie likes to keep it democratic.” He shifted his guitar, resting the body on his hip. It was a raggedy looking Telecaster, a vintage hollow body that might have been worth a fortune if its finish hadn’t been worn to bare wood around the pick guard. He tapped the strings, the contact registering as a crack from the amplifier. Then he swung his arm, brought it down hard on a power chord, and the band was off, thundering through the opening strains of something I knew but couldn’t place, an easy slice of classic rock—primal and catchy—but infiltrated with turntable scratch and sampled loops. A wave rippled through the crowd. People danced. I would have joined them, but Ariana held me tight, apparently unmoved by the music. “I’m going to try some video.” She still had the camera out, working it at her side. “Stay close.” She turned with me, panning the crowd.

“This is amazing,” I said.

“And it hasn’t even started.” She turned back toward the stage, angling closer, finding a vantage that offered a more-or-less unobstructed view. “Let’s hold up here. I want to be—”

A new sound emerged, riding the band’s rhythm as a figure appeared beside the guitar player. It crouched, hunkering low between the monitors. It looked small, disfigured, more troll than man. But that apparent trick of the light ended when he stood up and spread his arms. Spotlights converged, setting him aglow, his face like a flame in the crossing beams.

“That’s him!” I shouted, knowing it had to be.

Ariana tensed.

“That’s him, isn’t it?”

She squeezed my arm, nails digging in as Quicksilver continued singing in a voice so close and clear that it seemed to come from somewhere inside me. I shivered, listening, hanging on words that didn’t belong to anything the band was playing. Their music was predictable and familiar, wrapped around a three-chord jam that could have been “Johnny B. Goode” or “Going Up Country” or even “Spirit in the Sky”—but Quicksilver’s vocals gave it something new, a wild counterpoint that transcended sound and meaning. And now I was dancing, unable to resist, feeling the music until Quicksilver suddenly dropped back into a crouch between the monitors.

I realized Ariana was no longer with me.

I looked around, didn’t see her among the dancers, then turned back toward the stage where Quicksilver’s glowing eyes seemed to be tracking something, focused on movement near the back of the warehouse.

Following his line of sight, I turned to see a door swing open on a wedge of twilight. Was it Ariana? Was she leaving?

The music faltered as I pushed through the crowd. A mic fell, landed with a pop, then squealed with feedback before someone turned it off. The players cut out one by one as I reached the door and looked into the blue-gray evening. The music had stopped. Lightning flashed bright against the face of an incoming storm. Ariana was twenty feet away, stumbling between parked cars, heading for her bike.

I went after her, moving faster as she paused, set her hand on the fender of a rusted Ford, and then dropped out of sight.

“Ariana!”

I rounded the car to find her doubled over, puking on the ground, splashing the tires. I came up behind her, set a hand on her back. A tremor went through her. “No!” She pushed me away.

“What happened?”

She wiped her mouth, then looked at me. Her eyes were wide, frightened. “You tell me, Lorcan. What did you see?”

“You mean Quicksilver?”

“Tell me!”

“Same thing you—”

“Don’t bet on that, Lorcan. Tell me. What did he look like?”

I tried telling her, describing the glowing man with the silver voice.

She cut me off. “That’s not what I saw. Jesus, Lorcan!” She shivered, hugged herself, then glanced toward the warehouse. “I need to get out of here.”

People were leaving the building now, gathering along the graffitied wall, looking at us.

I tried walking her toward her bike.

“Hold on.” She took out her camera, aimed it back at the crowd, hit record. “What do you see, Calder?” She angled the view screen toward me. I glanced at it. The people were small, pixilated. I had to look behind us to be sure what they were doing, and then I knew.

They were coming toward us.

“Maybe they just want to check on you,” I said.

“Fat chance.”

We hurried through the lot.

“They’re after us, Lorcan.” She put the camera away as we reached her bike. Then she climbed on, kicked the starter. “Get on if you want. If not, you’re on your own.”

The crowd was coming faster now.

I climbed on behind her, holding tight as she sped out of the lot and down the street. My car came into view, still wedged tight beside the hydrant. She braked hard. I climbed off, expecting to follow her in my car, but she gunned the bike as soon as I was clear of the saddle, roaring away, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust.

The crowd sounded nearer, out of sight but still advancing. I got into my car, pulled from the curb, and burned rubber till I reached the cross street. She wasn’t in sight when I rounded the corner . . . nor when I rounded the next.

By the third street, I realized I was only a block from Smallman, the main artery leading through the Strip District and toward Fort Pitt Boulevard.

No longer lost, I steered toward home.

An hour later, dressed in a robe and still damp from a shower that had cleaned everything but the permanent marker on my palm, I went to my computer and logged on to Ariana’s blog. It was pretty barebones, no bio or graphics, but plenty of posts about politics, fringe science, weird news.

Her most recent screed bore the heading:

The Secret World of Silverheads

The Music Scene You’ve Never Seen

It gave an overview of Bobbie Quicksilver, purporting to be based on information gained after hacking a private Quicksilver site.

Apparently, the first place anyone had encountered Bobbie Quicksilver had been on a community discussion board, on a thread devoted to the doubts and aspirations of bottom-feeding musicians. It was there that someone with the username Hg80 had posted a link to a private forum, one that he claimed might be of interest to likeminded dreamers.

People going to the site confronted a string of apparently random images, each accompanied with the same question:
What do you see?
Those who made it to the next level were asked to respond to a list of personal and philosophical prompts. After that, selected applicants received access to a private discussion board where they found a posted manifesto by Hg80, in which he revealed that the forum would serve as a place for planning private gatherings to be held in free spaces throughout the rustbelt region of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio:

We’ll focus on towns where security is minimal, where police forces are bankrupt and understaffed, where the industries and businesses that once provided our nonmusical livelihoods sit empty and forgotten. Fittingly, our venues will be abandoned warehouses, wharfs, rooftops, lots, depots, and mills—places abandoned by the world at large.

I have set up this discussion in hopes of attracting the attention of the creative and adventurous souls needed to make our dream a reality, people who can play music, paint signs, highjack power lines, rig locations for light and sound. At each event, we will move in fast, spend a couple hours celebrating who we are, and clear out before the Powers That Be realize we were ever there.

Anyone who wishes to jam at these events is free to do so, and if all goes well I will join in. My name is Bobbie Quicksilver. I may not be one of you, but I share your dreams. Together, we can make things happen.

The first concert was in a derelict depot near Pittsburgh, where Quicksilver sang for an hour in front of a hundred stunned spectators before vanishing (some claimed literally) just ahead of the cops.

A week later, Silverheads commandeered a vacant lot in McKeesport, withheld announcement of the event until ninety minutes before the show, and got Quicksilver for nearly two sets. Some said he would have played longer if a television crew hadn’t arrived with satellite van and cameras.

“We’re not about publicity,” Quicksilver wrote in a post the next day. “When people are ready, we will reveal our agenda. Until then, we’ll play in the shadows.”

Soon fans were staging five to six shows a month, with Silverheads commandeering locations as far west as Indiana. But not everyone who discovered the concerts became a true believer, and some of the skeptics posted blogs warning of hidden threats, secret agendas. Inexplicably, such comments soon disappeared, and their sources never posted on the subject again.

Ariana’s preliminary survey of the Quicksilver scene ended with her announcing she was one such skeptic. Unlike the others, however, she claimed to possess the journalistic acumen to expose the mystery. She wrote: “This screed has been timed to go live while I’m attending Quicksilver’s most recent show. Later tonight, I intend to report what I see. Check back. All will be revealed.”

It was nearly midnight. I refreshed my screen, hoping Ariana had posted her update. But instead of getting a new blog entry, I was soon staring at
404 Error: Page Not Found.
Her site had vanished. I hit the browser’s reload; the error message reappeared.

I was in the process of reentering the URL from my palm when a sudden buzzing broke my concentration.

Someone was downstairs, ringing to be let in.

I crossed the room, pressed the talk button. “Yeah?”

“Lorcan!” It was Ariana, sounding even more unhinged than when we’d been running from the Silverheads. “Lorcan! Help me!”

I put my finger on the unlock switch, hesitated, then hit the talk button once more. “Hold on. I’m coming down.”

“Lorcan!” Her voice echoed in the hall outside my apartment, rising up the stairwell. With it came a frantic pounding, as if she were slapping her hands against the glass. “Help me!”

I hurried down, bare feet slipping on the nappy carpet, trying to get to her before she broke the window. But when I reached the front hall, I stopped cold.

“Lorcan! Help me!”

Handprints covered the pane, smeared and streaked, almost hiding her face behind a haze of blood.

Quicksilver had ambushed her as she rode away. But it wasn’t the Quicksilver I had seen in the warehouse. That image had been a lie.

“You didn’t see the truth, Lorcan.” She lay in my bathtub, cleaning her wounds, her clothes a bloody heap on the bathroom floor. “What you saw tonight—what you and all those other people saw, it wasn’t the real Quicksilver.” She had three gashes running from her left temple to the corner of her mouth. One gash just missed her eye, but another had snagged her ear and ripped out the gage. Her lobe dangled, split in two.

“I should take you to the hospital.”

“No, Lorcan. No way.”

“I don’t think I can patch you up myself.”

“You’re going to try.” She sat up, sloshing in the bloody water. In spite of her wounds, she was beautiful. I shouldn’t have noticed that, considering her condition. But there it was, and she must have sensed what I was thinking because she said: “We could get it on if I wasn’t so messed up, Lorcan.”

“That’s okay, Ariana.”

“What? That I’m messed up?”

“Not that.”

“That we can’t get it on?”

“You know what I mean.”

She reached for me, pushing back the collar of my robe, seeing how the worst of my scars extended to my chest. “Tell me about this.”

“It’s from another life, Ariana.”

“You said that before. Now tell me the rest.” She shifted again, wincing deeper this time. “Come on. I’m in a pretty good position to sympathize. Tell me.”

I turned away, thinking it through, deciding where to begin, how much to tell. “I was in Afghanistan,” I said at last. “I’d gotten into some trouble. I was lost.”