Chapter 2 - Shatter

In the unearthly glare of blue and red stage lights, sweat shimmers like an oil slick, beautiful and hypnotizing but vaguely perverse. It’s a deadly combination on young bodies, writhing and moving in light and half-light, exertion steaming from every pore and the visceral pound of music, in whatever language, weaving individuals into a group, a mass, a single thing.

At the height of a concert, there is not so great a distinction between band and audience. In fact, there is almost no distinction at all.

They were counting on this, they who appeared late in the show to find fans and singers already whipped into euphoria. They knew that they could count on the human instinct to mob to work in their favor. After all, just as the line between band and audience blurs, so too do the lines between hysteria and madness, between rapture and chaos, and between frenzy and panic.

It was one of the major reasons they chose this place, this time. In their experience, few political leaders could incite their followers to such fervor as this band inspired. Response to them in Europe was shocking; so seldom had a reaction like this occurred in history that it was still hard sometimes to believe. This was not Europe, but fans everywhere are the same, even if their numbers are not. Tokio Hotel’s popularity was astounding, nearly unprecedented, and, above all, potent.

They were the perfect target.

It was nothing at all to drive up behind the hall and park the catering van near the lavish tour bus. No trouble to slip inside with covered dishes and box after box of supplies. No one even looked at them twice, not the security guards or the police. It was a concert, and the band would have to be fed, later; it made sense for them to be there.

And once they were inside, of course, there would be nothing security or police could do about them.

*****

Bill dabbed at his forehead, smiling all over his face. He waved happily to the screaming crowd as he caught his breath. There had to be a reason “Scream” wasn’t getting any easier to sing. You’d think after belting it out well over five hundred times in the last two years, it wouldn’t require any effort at all, anymore.

He guzzled water, feeling ironic. Apparently practice did not, in fact, make perfect.

Georg seemed to quite agree. He was favoring his left wrist, again, as he wiped his face off, sweat beading at the tips of his bangs. He shot Bill a wry look as he carefully flexed his wrist once. Nothing for it now, but he’d be icing it for a couple of hours after the show.

The singer glanced down at the set list taped to the floor. Tom had decided almost at the last minute to switch “Ready, Set, Go” and “Raise Your Hands” so they could play right from one to the next for a good, strong finish (before the encore, of course). It would likely butcher Bill’s throat, but since when did guitarists give a damn about their singers?

Bill still hadn’t quite got the practice schedule out of his head, and kept having to mentally remind himself every five seconds which song was really coming up next. He took another long drink of water.

When he spoke to the audience (“Danke schön,” “Thank you,” and then a memorized English regret about these being their last two songs), they screamed with reserves of oxygen and energy Bill did not think they could possibly have left. He had to admit that, small crowd though this was, their energy was just phenomenal. They made this place feel like a stadium; they sounded like a crowd twice their size. Yet, the nearly claustrophobic venue ensured that the audience was close enough for Bill to enjoy every single smile, and laugh, and teardrop in the first three rows.

The top of the world was not nearly a high enough spot to accurately describe his mood.

He glanced over at Tom, who instinctively looked at him at almost the same moment. “You ready?” the guitarist called.

Bill grinned back. “Are you?”

Tom smirked, his teeth flashing ultraviolet under the stage lights, turned to Gustav, and signaled. The drummer whacked out the tempo, Tom tore into the riff, and Bill took a deep breath.

Their first American concert was almost over, and he had the strange desire for it never to end.

The crowd sang along loudly and enthusiastically to “Ready, Set, Go.” Bill knew all these English words by heart, understood them now almost as well as the German ones, but he thought he’d never quite get used to hearing English lyrics sung back at him. It was kind of like being in a dream and seeing Tom, but hearing him speak with Georg’s voice; disconcerting. Didn’t help, of course, that he was already a little giddy from oxygen loss, which only exacerbated the slight sense of vertigo.

Which is why, when the last echoes of the song died and Gustav started in immediately on the driving downbeat for “Raise Your Hands,” Bill thought he was only hearing things. Gustav’s drums were fucking loud; he thought his eardrums had suddenly burst in. It took him a long moment and a strange sound-shift in the crowd’s screams to realize that there was nothing wrong with his ears or his head. There wasn’t anything wrong with Gustav’s drumming.

Because Gustav wasn’t playing, anymore.

Bill stared, wide-eyed and openmouthed, up at Gustav’s platform, where the drummer was standing and sweeping the crowd with a frantic gaze, both drumsticks gripped motionlessly in one hand. Suddenly he turned and jumped off the platform completely, a sudden streak of reddish light extinguished as his bare torso dropped into shadow. In his haste he actually toppled over his hi-hat. Bill watched it fall, glittering, shocked that Gustav would be so careless. But when it hit the ground he didn’t hear a crash. There was, instead, a sudden and sharp peal of thunder in the room, and everything was drowned by screaming.

Bill whirled around, just as he was caught across the middle by a big beefy arm and Saki actually bodily picked him up, dragging him off the stage. In the deep darkness at the back of the auditorium, Bill could see a flash of sparkling light erupting in midair, accompanied, it seemed, by even more of the excruciating thunder, and suddenly he understood, in brutal clarity. Gunfire.

Then he was hauled off the stage and manhandled down the stairs toward the back exits. He didn’t feel his feet touch the ground once. His heart in his throat, a thought occurred to him, standing out in the confusion all around him. He shouted it out, as loud as he could.

“Tom!”

“He’s safe, Karl’s got him,” Saki’s voice rumbled through Bill’s frame. He looked up at the big man, who still had Bill mostly suspended in midair by the waist. Saki’s eyeglasses flashed under the fluorescent lighting.

“Are you sure?!”

“Yes, Bill, I saw him grab your brother. Come on, there is an emergency fire escape down here.”

Bill attempted running only to find that, indeed, his feet were off the ground. Saki felt him struggling and set him down. Around them there was an ever-swelling group of techs and roadies and other crew members all moving toward the same exit. Suddenly Bill caught sight of Georg, moving hastily along with the crowd and swiveling his head every now and then as though looking for someone. He saw Bill.

“Hey!” he called, looking like he wanted to make his way to the singer.

“Keep running!” Saki barked. “Just get out of here!”

Georg understood and, with a last look at Bill, kept going. He pressed his way through, trying not to shove anyone. They all needed to get out of here. But it was hard not to jostle. Directly in front of him, one of the stage managers suddenly burst into a panicked sprint, shooting off through the mass of people as it tightened around a doorway. People cried out and swore as he bore straight into them, disappearing in the crowd, but one woman he clipped harder than the others, sending her spinning off her feet.

Georg blinked in shock and immediately reached down to help her up. Around him, no less frightened but slightly more civilized people made their way around the two of them as he hoisted her to her feet.

Her eyes were huge, and she thanked him, stuttering, before immediately turning and running on. Barely had Georg let her go when a faster-moving and much more solid weight ran right into his back.

“Uhf!” He staggered and turned to see Gustav, who reached out to steady the bassist with an apologetic look.

“Sorry,” Gustav said, his voice brittle and clipped. “Glad I found you.”

Georg nodded, feeling the drummer give him a motivating shove.

“Come on, let’s get out. My god, Georg, did you hear the guns? They were automatic…”

“I know,” Georg replied, feeling the strangest urge to reach back and grab Gustav’s hand so the two of them could not be separated. “Where the fuck did the guns come from?”

Gustav didn’t get a chance to reply, not that he would have had an answer. Suddenly the two of them felt warm, damp air on their face and could see the open door at the end of the hall gaping into the night. The Exit sign above was angry red, and next to it, an even angrier alarm bell was ringing abrasively.

Relief washed through the drummer and the bassist, and Gustav stayed close to Georg as they pushed out onto the trembling metal fire escape. It was only a single flight of stairs to the wet pavement below, and people were crowding the stairs so badly that several of them almost tumbled off. Georg clung close to the railing, making for the steps. The tour bus was just around back; he had the somewhat irrational thought that, if they made it there, it would be safe. Anything could be resolved if they just made it to the bus.

He and Gustav jumped the last two stairs and both boys shot off, careening down the alleyway and around the back edge of the building, making for the bus across the parking lot. Others around them were running that direction, too, either toward the bus or toward the crew trailers parked behind it. Gustav looked around. The parking lot was deserted. There should have been at least one cop back here, guarding the back entrance. Where was he?

Within fifteen feet of the bus, Georg, Gustav, and their fellow refugees were brought to an abrupt halt by a painfully loud machine gun burst, very close by. People screamed, and all of a sudden two men, dressed in black and wearing face masks, appeared from around the other side of the bus. Both had guns; the one in front rested his against his shoulder, nose to the sky, while the one behind kept his gun trained on the people who had fled the concert hall. Everyone froze.

The streetlamps in the parking lot traced the wicked, gleaming outlines of two subautomatic machine guns in the strange men’s hands, men who were themselves nothing more than white eye sockets cut out of black fabric. Like a false-color image, the guns burned bright while the men themselves sank out of focus. All eyes were trained on the weapons.

Suddenly the man in front lowered his; the crowd flinched violently. He made a gesture with the gun and spoke in clear, flat German, “Everyone from here—” he drew a line with the muzzle of his rifle, down the center of the group, “to my left, you’re free to go.”

In disbelief, the huddled people looked at their neighbors. What side of the line are we on? What about you, are you coming too? Is he really letting us go? People to the far right side of the group moved definitively away, some taking off immediately and some slinking aside skeptically, but all of them sure of where they stood. People closer to the borderline only moved after several long, silent seconds, unsure of whether they were about to be shot for moving when they weren’t allowed to.

The man who had spoken chuckled a little. Four yards back from him, still in amongst the remaining huddle of people, Gustav felt a flare of fury. The guy was getting a real kick out of people’s terror. He made an ever-so-slight, unconscious movement forward, but Georg gripped his wrist painfully, warning him.

The man in charge spoke again. “The rest of you stand still. If you try to leave without me telling you that you can, you will be shot. Clear?” He didn’t wait for a response; he dove directly into the crowd, grabbed a man, who began trembling visibly, and shoved him away from the group. The man’s eyes were wide, and the masked man who’d singled him out gave a little nod. “You’re free.”

With relief so apparent he looked in danger of collapsing, the newly-pardoned man stumbled and wheeled backward, taking his clumsily immediate leave.

The masked man went through the crowd, picking and choosing people to send away. There seemed to be no method to his selection; he sent most of the roadies away but retained two of them, and though he seemed inclined to pitch all the security guards, there was one he did not reprieve.

When he came to Saki, however, he jerked his gun to one side. “Go,” he said. Saki looked at him straight in the eye, then made to move away, gently and surreptitiously prodding Bill before him. The masked man saw this and his arm snapped out, halting them both by shoving his gun across Saki’s chest.

“Not him, just you,” the mask growled.

Saki swallowed thickly. Only Bill was close enough to notice that his hands were trembling.

“If he stays, I stay,” Saki said finally, looking more resolute than he sounded. The mask turned toward him fully, obviously displeased.

“And if you stay, you die. It’s not difficult to understand.” He gave the bigger man a little nudge with the barrel of his gun, by way of persuasion. Saki gulped again.

Bill could see how terrified he really was, but still his old friend did not budge. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach; to see Saki killed, right here, for no other reason than he did not want to leave Bill…it was just unthinkable. Bill would rather be shot himself.

He touched the older man on the shoulder. “You have to go.” Saki looked at him, defiance mixed with fear in his eyes. “It’ll be okay,” Bill reassured. “I’d rather know you were safe than have you stay here and get hurt.”

A flicker of betrayal passed over Saki’s face, but it was only an instant before it was replaced by a sad gratitude. Saki reached up, patted Bill’s hand once, and moved away. There was a determination in his step that spoke of immediate police reports and vigilante action.

The mask came near to Bill, and though his mouth was not visible, his smile was audible as he murmured, “Good boy.”

Bill glared daggers at him as he moved through the crowd once more.

A grueling fifteen minutes later, the initial crowd of around thirty had been whittled to ten—Bill, Georg, and Gustav all remained, as well as six crew members and one security guard, a young man who looked more scared than any of the boys did. The two masked men seemed satisfied.

“A fine-looking bunch,” he commented mildly, resting his gun on his shoulder, again. “And I’m sure quite intelligent, too. No doubt by now you’ve realized that you are hostages, and that you will be doing no more and no less than exactly what I say for the next indeterminate amount of time. You had best hope our demands are met sooner, rather than later, as I’m sure you all have homes and families to which you’d like to return.”

One of the women in the crowd suddenly choked on a stifled sob. Another woman reached out to comfort her. In the distance there rose the ghostly echo of a police siren, pricking the ears of all those standing in the parking lot.

“Ah,” said the masked leader. “You may begin by returning to the hall. It looks like it might rain again, and we wouldn’t want you all standing out here getting soaked.”