Chain Gang All Stars

They were used to crowds, though not usually this size. But it was the energy, the way they screamed the names out, that made Thurwar remember what her life was. That was, there had never been a time when so many people, who cared sincerely for them, were around in these numbers. It made it impossible to forget they were the subject of a great and incredible evil. There were so many people there, and in their presence Thurwar felt a part of something massive, something terrible that could unearth something good.

Soldier-police pushed and swatted a path clear for them to walk toward the market. The people in black clothing did not aim to touch her and most did not take pictures. But they called her name, Staxxx’s name, the names of everyone on the Chain, with a tenderness that hurt to hear. It made her remember who she’d been before all this. When her name had meant she was being recognized for who she was, not the commodity she had become. And that reminder brought with it a deep understanding of Bishop and all the other Links who had made to end their lives in battle. Thurwar usually, when she thought of her own death, thought of it as a deserved punishment. But these people, these people screamed so loudly not only that she didn’t deserve to die, but that she didn’t deserve any aspect of what her life had become.

Suicide was a part of the CAPE culture, though it wasn’t publicly called that.^[*] It was almost never on the March, out in the open with at least the potential for a sunny day and a bit of peace, or in the adrenalized mayhem of the deathmatches that Links killed themselves. Although that did happen. There were the Arson Johnsons, the Melancholia Bishops. Arson Johnson was famous for being Melancholia’s first BattleGround kill. He’d kneeled and taken Hass Omaha’s blow almost gleefully. And years later Melancholia had all but done the same in front of Thurwar.

But despite the brutality of the March, it was in the more domestic stays in the Hub Cities prior to the BattleGround matches that most Links chose to separate themselves from themselves. It was when they returned to a life most like a civilian’s. When survival is difficult something in you begs the attempt. When it’s easy, it’s a different thing entirely. Thurwar thought of this as she walked from the school, careful to let Staxxx lead the way, though she stayed just behind her.

Free Hamara, free Loretta! the crowd screamed.

Thurwar, overcome by a spirit she did not dare smother, punched a fist into the air and the crowd screamed louder. A further affirmation of a truth Thurwar tried not to let too close: She was a human being tortured. That had been true before she’d joined CAPE and it had grown truer every moment of her life the past three years. It hurt to admit this, although it was something she couldn’t ever forget. But she had never had the truth she lived affirmed so brightly by people outside the Chains.

And now, to complete their torture, they were going to ask her to destroy her favorite person. The person who had kept her on earth. Thurwar let the people’s voices carry her. She let their hope seep into her veins.

The eight soldier-police around them, four in front and four in back, stepped quickly and precisely. Another blessing of the Hub Cities was the sweet semblance of privacy. In the cities, the HMCs were seldom seen. The exclusivity of being a Hub City depended on a “you had to be there” energy, and so, in these times between the Circuit and before the BattleGround, the Links were not on-screen.

They were walking toward a park in the middle of town. She wanted Staxxx to enjoy being loved, she wanted Staxxx to love her, she wanted to keep loving Staxxx, and she wanted to tell her they would soon be asked to kill each other. She couldn’t decide which of these she wanted most.

Then Thurwar saw her. In the middle of all this feeling and energy. It was the girl. As if summoned by the force in the air. As if the truth had appeared physically to move her to action. As if the raw energy of the people around Thurwar had manifested in the presence of the young woman. She was standing on the white lines of the crosswalk. The same woman who’d given Thurwar the card that had thrown her life into this new lonely terror. She stood there like an omen. Thurwar kept pace and nodded to her. A woman she was grateful for but also hated, for stealing from her the bliss of ignorance.

She made sure not to turn around or to indicate otherwise that she’d seen someone important to her. Someone she knew in some strange and delicate way. There were eyes everywhere, even without the HMCs floating around. People were always watching.

She considered the woman, the truth-bringer, and noticed that her brightness, which had peppered Thurwar’s dreams for the past week, was gone. And she decided that maybe even if she did hate her, she also loved her. There was a reason she’d appeared again now. Thurwar was a curator of truth herself. She staged it, gave it light, made it available to herself when needed, and sometimes shelved it altogether. Stashed it hard into the recesses of her mind. But there was no destroying what was true. Still she curated, and she was good at it. The proof was her life. She continued to continue, had not removed herself from herself as so many in her position had when given the chance.

There was a concentrated and still-growing mass of people at the town’s center, where they had a farmers market. There was a balloon archway so tall and welcoming it made Thurwar a little sick to see it. Pastel blues and greens and whites and golds swayed in the breeze as a DJ played a song that the world knew as Staxxx’s intro song. Electronic and bright but also melodic and deep.

They continued on a sidewalk in a space that people might have described as quaint. She focused on Staxxx, who seemed to be trying to squeeze everything around her into her mind at once. She looked this way, then at a tree, giggled at a squirrel moving up a trunk as if that squirrel had been her squirrel and she was tickled to find it. Behind the two of them Randy and Sai walked, both smiling, the ripples of Staxxx’s energy washing through them. Bad Water smiled too, excited to be around other people. And behind all of them was a huge congregation, a black wave following, chanting so loudly that they could never be ignored.

Their lives were always strange. Every day they lived the cruel and unusual, but as the screams for their liberation shook behind them and the smell of popcorn wafted in from the approaching market, Thurwar felt a new flavor of dread. The end of what had been her life was right in front of them.

“Inmate Thurwar, Inmate Stacker, you two will be at station one, Deane’s Creams,” one of the men in armor plates said. As usual, the police had equipment that suggested war and not cotton-candy stands. Equipment that would only make sense if they were expecting other similarly armed police officers suddenly to revolt and turn against them. Four of the other remaining soldier-police had moved back to the metal barricade that had been erected around the entire farmers market. The protestors, upon realizing that they would not be let into the farmers market—the official price for entry that morning was significant and had to have been paid in advance—flooded the perimeter. Now, behind the metal barricade, there was a second wall, this one of people all dressed in black. Meanwhile the Chain-Gang fans inside the farmers market were studiously buying cotton candy or perusing the tomatoes, going out of their way to pretend that this was all normal and that there weren’t an extra thousand people there, protesting just a few yards away.

“Got it,” Thurwar said, and she looked at Staxxx.

“Us,” Staxxx said, and it made Thurwar’s heart dance a little bit. Then Staxxx looked at the soldier-police officer and said, “Do you think they have any vegan flavors? I’m lactose intolerant.”

“I know,” the officer said with a grin. “Literally everybody knows you’re a lactose-free pescatarian.”

“I’m just saying, ’cause that would be a pretty fucked up Civic Service to have me at an ice-cream stand all day knowing I can’t eat any of it,” Staxxx said.

“You might just have to owe your stomach one. I bet they got that fresh straight-from-a-cow shit,” Rico said.

“Never ‘owe your stomach one’ before the grounds,” Staxxx said, and she might as well have been chatting about the weather. “That’s a pro tip.” And then, with a vicious speed, she turned around and punched Rico’s stomach. Just before she made contact, though, she erased her fist’s velocity to nothing, so she barely pressed into him before turning back to the armored men. “Bad Water got lucky that one time, isn’t that right, day-old-tuna man?”

“That’s right,” Bad Water said, his cheeks glowing.

Thurwar drank in the moment. The little moments of Staxxx. The way she carried herself. When she was feeling good, there was no one like her. When she was feeling bad, she was just as special. A person so unchained despite it all. Staxxx reminded anyone lucky enough to see her that there were parts of a human that could never be chained.

“Okay, enough.” The officer made his voice big to try to remind them that he was in charge, though his having to try made it feel exactly the opposite. Under the scrutiny of the protestors, who were still flooding the surrounding area, the officers seemed keen on proving they were good men, that they weren’t the enemy, and yet there could be no enemy but them. They were the ones with guns. On the opposite road two more soldier-police tanks rolled down the road. The sound of them smoothed the head officer’s mouth into a calm line.

“Stacker and Thurwar, down that way to station one now. Or do you need an escort?”

“We can make it, I think,” Thurwar said. They left the group and walked in the direction of a table covered with cloth and six tubs of ice cream. There was a large sandwich board out front that read DEANE’S CREAMS in extravagant red script. A man and a woman and two kids were waiting in front of the table already.

B3 IS NOT FOR ME. B3 IS NOT FOR ME. B3 IS NOT FOR ME.

The chants were everywhere in the air.

Thurwar was alone with Staxxx, or as close to alone as she could ask for. She grabbed Staxxx’s hand into hers for just a moment before letting go.

They walked in the soft grass, and once they were a few feet from the officers it was as if the spell had been broken and the gravity their bodies had become accustomed to was reengaged. A stricter perimeter for their movement had been established, although their wrists still showed green.

A small boy stomped toward them, trailed closely by his parents, who smiled warm and shy.

“You’re the greatest of all time,” he said definitively to Thurwar. Then he turned, just so, to Staxxx and said, “And you’re the third-greatest of all time.”

“Jimmi,” the boy’s father said.

“Wow, in my own hometown?” Staxxx said, winking up at the parents. More people had gathered around them. The feeling of being closed in on was familiar to them both. Staxxx let out a too-huge sigh. “You know what, that’s okay. Everyone’s entitled to their opinions,” Staxxx laughed. The parents looked at her gratefully.

“We—we really are huge fans of yours. We always have been. We remember when you ran at Xavier. We support you completely,” the mother said. And Thurwar considered this familiar absurdity. How it was punctuated so strongly by the massive crowds all around them.

“Can you sign my hammer?” the little boy asked Thurwar. He offered up a LifeDepot™-brand hammer, the kind that might be in any toolbox. The suggestion that this might somehow be like Hass Omaha was insulting, but the insult was received with a smile. She had signed so many rubber grips before.

“Sure, you got a marker?”

“I do!” a different person, not in the first family, said, and it was clear that this large crowd would make the short walk to the ice-cream stand a journey. “But why don’t we let these ladies get to doing what they came here for, y’all,” the man said. He wore a maroon apron that read DEANE’S across the front. “Why don’t you sign little Jimmi’s and then we’ll let the rest flow through the stand?”

“Sounds good,” Thurwar replied. She took his marker, wrote “LT” on the grip, and followed him through the crowd.

* Suicide is the leading cause of preventable death among prisoners. From 2001 to 2019 suicide exploded in prisons. In that span of time the number of suicides increased 85 percent in state prisons, 61 percent in federal prisons, and 13 percent in local jails.