The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  She shifted position in the sheets, listening carefully.

  The Hatter gave a little yelp from downstairs. Her father's soft voice in the corridor, speaking with someone Anna barely recognized, a voice she hadn't heard for so long.

  Her mother.

  "She doesn't need me. I make her worse."

  It was a bad argument, she knew that much. The worst, and now she would listen to it again.

  "You're saying that for you," her father said, as if reading from an old script. His voice was honey and chocolate rolled into one. He was kind and calm, even though he was crying. "It's for you, not her. Don't pretend this is for her."

  "There's things I want to do still, things I need to achieve."

  "She is the achievement. Every day she makes progress. It's phenomenal. If only you'd look at her. Look in and see her, and tell me that she's not an achievement. She's braver than anyone I know, and you're missing it all."

  Now her mother was crying too. Anna huddled under the thumping in her head, and imagined the tears smearing the makeup round her mother's eyes, but already she couldn't remember her face. Her eyes were mud pits, full of self-pity; her lips were a cradle of regret.

  "Don't make me do this. We're not the same; I'm not like you. It will break me, and what good is it if I hate her? I don't want that. She's better with you."

  She imagined her father holding her mother's hands. "Please. Don't give up on us. She's getting better. I've already quit my job; you keep doing yours, it's all right. We won't ask much. Just don't leave us, please."

  Now her voice became firmer. "You're not listening. This isn't a whim. I can't be responsible for this any more. I'm no good to either of you in hospital." A pause. "I'll still send money."

  "Money? She needs her mother!"

  "Then don't call me her mother." The voice was fully cold now, and it cut into Anna's head like a drill. "Maybe that's for the best. You were always her favorite. Live in your fantasy world together, pretend she's getting better, when really this is all she will ever be. Yes, I've researched her condition. You tell tales of Alice to a little girl who will never leave that room again, and you want my help to lie to her? It's your choice to stay, not mine. I didn't make you. Don't blame me for doing what you won't."

  "What I won't? She's my daughter!"

  "Your daughter," came the sharp reply. "See, you're getting it already."

  Her footsteps stamped away, clacking in high heels. The door slammed.

  After that her father sobbed quietly in the corridor, alone. The Hatter yelped, even though they hadn't gotten the Hatter yet, but already he was here, because they needed him. She heard her door creak gently open, and shut her eyes tight as her father peeked his head through the gap.

  "She does love you," he whispered, almost as if he was trying to convince himself. Anna's pulse raced. Did he know she was awake? It seemed suddenly very important that he not know. Those were things she should never have heard. She went very still. She barely even breathed.

  Holding her breath hurt her head. At last the door closed. She gasped, and opened her eyes.

  Someone else was there.

  "I'm here," he said, like he'd already said once before, though she'd forgotten that in all the excitement. This wasn't her father, though it was another man. He had a gray face with glowing white eyes. He had red marks across his chest, as if raked by a bear-bird's talons. There was something very sad about him.

  "Hello," said Anna.

  The word came easily. The pressure in her head eased slightly. She even shuffled out of the covers a little, to better see him, though his eyes lit the room rather pleasantly, like twin pocket-sized moons.

  "Do you remember me," said the figure. He was a man, but not old.

  She concentrated hard, looking at his face. There was something familiar there, and a quote from Alice sprang up in her mind. It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. The White Queen had said it.

  "No," said Anna, "but perhaps if you say a little more, I will. What's your name?"

  He smiled. "Husband. Father. I would have been so many things, for you. And now here you are. Falling."

  "I'm lying in bed. I'm not falling."

  "Well," he said, generously, "there are two ways to fall, aren't there? I know that well. One is with our eyes open, and one is with them closed. Your eyes are closed now, Anna. I don't blame you. The monsters are really very strong. Too much for you, too much of a gulp, but you never would look before you leapt."

  This didn't make very much sense to her. She showed this by frowning. Squeezing her brows together like that hurt, but it was a powerful expression that had the desired effect. It shamed him into stopping talking for a time.

  "I should think you have no business here. In my room."

  He grunted. "I heard them talking. Your parents. It's an odd moment to retreat to. I suppose it's a pivot point in your personality, after which you changed."

  Now he was being nosey. He shouldn't have heard any of that.

  "That is most certainly not your business."

  "You're even talking like Alice, now," he said. "It's cute, and I understand. You're falling down the rabbit hole, and this place is solid ground, but you can't stay here."

  "I can't imagine staying anywhere else," she answered, feeling quite indignant. "This is my bed, in my room. It's you who should leave."

  "It's a memory, and they're hacking it now. It won't be long. But I won't leave without you." He smiled. "The madness out there exceeds the Hatter, I guarantee it, but at least we'll be together," he added a wink to his smile, for good measure. "I'll be your White Rabbit."

  She gave him a blast of the frown again. "I'm afraid I don't have the slightest intimation of what you are speaking about." But that was a little too much Alice even for her.

  "Remember forwards, Anna," he coaxed. "Look around you. Is this really your room?"

  He swept his glowing gaze around the dark space, illuminating her sketches tacked to the walls. Strangely, they were not the pictures she remembered. They weren't happy and bright, with bird-women spreading their feathers, with cabbages wearing red polka dots on parade, but rather they were dark.

  She saw a picture of herself huddled in her father's arms, walking amongst a great mass of white-eyed people, and felt afraid. She saw a young woman that was her too, standing on a yacht with a gun held to her face, facing down a madwoman. She saw herself turned mad, standing atop a mountain of gray bodies and shouting into the sky. Last of all she saw the young man before her, though he was lying on his side with his white eyes gazing into hers for days, in a cold room where all her dreams died.

  She began to cry, as she remembered forward.

  "You are falling, Anna," he said. "Right now, and you're going to die if you don't open your eyes. Two seconds, a hundred feet or so, but you jumped, you made that choice, now we both have to pay."

  She gave a little laugh at that. Yes, she remembered. That was the woman she would become, the woman her father had always believed she would be, braver than anyone. She hadn't stayed up in this room forever, rather she'd left and seen things her mother would never believe.

  She looked into his sad face now, and knew who he was. He was smiling still, like he always had, glowing with an inner good humor. Solitude made some people mad and others cruel, but it had only made him kinder. She'd picked a man of infinite patience, or he'd picked her, and she hadn't yet shed a tear for him.

  Ravi.

  Now she did.

  She held out her arms to him, spindly pale things weakened by a year spent in bed, and he gathered her up. In his embrace the tears barely made a sound, and there at least she felt safe.

  "I have missed you," she whispered.

  "I'm here now," he said. "But so are they."

  There came a scratching at the window, then the heavy velvet curtain burst inward, and a storm of black and white creatures poured in. They flickered in and out of existence, bounced off the walls, and came for her.
Ravi wrapped her up and they slashed at his back, and she remembered again when this had happened last.

  RATATATATATAT

  "Not again," she said, her breath hot with tears, "please."

  "Every time, Anna," he said. "Now open your eyes."

  Under their blows he slashed apart, but in breaking apart he came together again as something different, something small and white which hopped between the creatures' arms and out through the door.

  Her White Rabbit.

  She followed while the monsters tore into his corpse.

  This way.

  He said it as a voice in her head, and she ran after him, not on legs but flying now, down the stairs where once a dozen bodies had lain, out through the door her mother had burst through only moments earlier, wheeling into the night.

  The creatures gave chase, but already Ravi was bounding far ahead down the road. Anna flew past her mother, standing with her featureless face open in surprise by the open trunk of a taxi. Never to be seen again.

  This way

  She leaped over a weed-filled swimming pool, garlanded with bad graffiti. She tracked after him through the red lobby of a theater with glass and gold ceilings. He darted into a deep burrow in the floor and Anna followed, into the darkness where he said-

  Here

  And-

  Now

  She opened her eyes and the mountains rushed up to meet her. A second only, solid rock and snow coming like a freight train, and she worked the twisted path Ravi had shown her and-

  Leapt.

  Reality snapped, she glimpsed the final image of a white rabbit running far ahead, so far she couldn't even see it anymore, then she was somewhere else.

  She blinked, standing on her feet.

  She stood on snow.

  The mountains were there, and so was she. Black crackles of energy rippled around her, fading trails, as the leper peeled off her body and fell smoking into the snow.

  Leaving Anna standing alone.

  She looked down. Her legs were unbroken. Her arms were unbroken. She wasn't falling anymore. She remembered the path, and the power, and understood what she'd done.

  She'd leapfrogged, just like them.

  She turned, taking in the majestic panorama. The lepers were still there, perhaps a hundred feet away, and already they were charging toward her. Their bodies crackled like popcorn, fizzing and spitting more angry than ever, but now she understood what that was, and how to counter it. Ravi had shown her the way.

  This was her power now.

  They closed in, but there was nothing to fear anymore. She reached inside and made the same twist.

  There was another flash, a sensation of being stretched and catapulted at the same time, then she was standing in a new place, on a white mountain peak. From above came the distant drone of a plane. She turned.

  The lepers were further off, confused by their own chaos. She laughed. She'd wrought havoc on them. She'd turned their own madness on themselves.

  This shit was just beginning.

  She looked at her hands, where crackles of black and white light were rippling like her skin was a thundercloud. The lepers started for her again, but it didn't mean a thing. This would be her training now. This would be turning them into the yacht that would sail her across the ocean.

  She took a step forward, raised her hands, and sent out bullets of control that stopped them flat in their tracks.

  17. LITTLE SISTER

  Lara left the White House in dignified, ordered silence, not because that was how she felt inside, but because that was how Witzgenstein forced her to be.

  Inside she was a jumble of confusion, anger and fear. It was too soon. She wasn't ready. She worked the deft fingers of her mind at the bridle, but even the most subtle blade could not chisel a way out of a stone dungeon. Witzgenstein's grip was rock, and she couldn't break it.

  She couldn't scream, or drop to the floor, or resist in any way.

  "You'll be my martyr," Janine whispered in her ear, standing in the portico while the crowd ahead craned to see her. So many faces she knew, looming from the dark. "What the people were denied in New LA."

  Lara burned already, inside. Witzgenstein's touch on her arm repelled her.

  "You talk about Jesus," Janine went on, savoring each word. "But we're in Old Testament times now. We need a foundation stone, and you will be it. But I won't be your Pontius Pilate." She chuckled, low and throaty. "Rather, I will be your greatest disciple, spreading your message far and wide. They will see you climb the pyre of your own volition, Lara. They will hear the recitation of your crimes in your own voice. They will see me beg you to turn aside. But you won't. Your performance will be epic. I've rehearsed it, believe it or not. For so long."

  The disgust in Lara heaped up. She could not vomit, but her throat gagged continually. Janine stroked her neck delicately. "Let's stop that, shall we?"

  The gagging stopped.

  All Lara could do was breathe, while the world wrenched inside. It couldn't be real. At least on Drake's stage she'd had a choice. She'd gone up there with no plan but the desire to sacrifice herself to break her people out of their shells, she'd been ready to die for it, but now even her death would be stolen.

  "Your audience is waiting," Janine said, her voice whispery with transparent passion. She gave Lara a little shove in the small of the back. "Lead on."

  Lara led on; a stately, measured stride.

  She wore no shoes. She wore only a gossamer white gown Witzgenstein had brought for her, concealing nothing. The gravel was warm, then the hastily cropped grass was damp and cool. She couldn't turn her head, but she couldn't miss the eager faces circling the dark, looming pyre, mixed in with blank-eyed children in the thick embrace of the dark. They carried burning torches, lighting the bloodlust in their eyes.

  Witzgenstein's bridle of control was strong in the air, lying thickly upon each person, though it wasn't a seed on barren ground. Lara could feel a part of each person reaching up to meet her touch, and it scared her. This was something that had always been inside them, something barbaric and primal but already there before Witzgenstein ever tapped it.

  Her guts turned to acid. She walked on slowly, with every stride perfectly measured out for her; the gait of a woman walking to her willing death, responding to the needs of her people. She tried to move her head, searching her peripheral vision for her children, but as she grew closer it was hard to see anything but the dark levels of the pyre.

  "Steady now," Janine said quietly. "They're here, but you won't see them. Don't shame yourself further, Lara. Let it be."

  Let it be. How could she shame herself further?

  She moved forward, up to the edge of the pyre, where Witzgenstein stopped. The crowd fell silent, as Lara set her bare foot on the lowest plank of the pyre, on the first crude step. They gasped. They couldn't believe it was happening either.

  The edge of the wood was sharp and hurt her heel, but that pain was nothing compared to what was coming. It was hard to imagine how bad it would be, hard to think through the fear. It was all happening so fast.

  "You don't have to do this, my child," Witzgenstein said from behind, loud enough to be heard by all. "Please. The great God forgives, even those such as you."

  "This is my forgiveness," Lara answered, not her own voice, and took her second step. She teetered briefly, almost losing her balance, and the crowd 'ahhed'. Every step was a tease, now. The lust in the air felt medieval, dark and cruel. Witzgenstein's touch only lay lightly atop it, riding a surge from within. They wanted this. They needed this.

  More steps. She climbed on broken wardrobes, on ancient chopped logs left drying for a decade, on fence slats and sawn loading pallets, climbing the great pyre. Upon this she would burn. It stank of gasoline. At the top the air was heady with the gas smell, and she felt light-headed.

  No ropes will be necessary, will they?

  Witzgenstein's voice came in her head. It wasn't really a question.

  Hold the
stake, there's my girl.

  Lara's body did as it was told. There was a narrow platform constructed in the wood for her to stand on. Her back pressed clean against the stake and her hands wrapped behind it. None of it felt real now, like she was locked in a nightmare that she would wake from at any moment.

  But it was real.

  She felt the scrape of the stake's cut branches through her thin gown, pressing against her skin. She felt the rising burn in her cheeks as the shame rose up. She saw the faces she knew circled in a glowing nimbus of torchlight, leering with some nameless thrill. She saw Cynthia. She saw Alan.

  This was it. The air was thick with emotion, ready for a cleansing storm. This was something all her efforts at community building had never offered in New LA. Her coffee shop the John Harrison had made people cry, had offered a gentle bandage of kindness, but it had never satisfied this aching need for violence and revenge.

  In New LA they'd never punished anyone like this, not even Julio. They'd never humiliated anyone. When justice had been done, it had been done in careful measures, sensitively, certain not to breed more violence.

  This was the opposite of that, and the people responded on an unconscious level, like peasants watching gladiators die in a Roman coliseum. Two thousand years had passed, and they hadn't changed at all.

  In the face of that her fear slipped, making room for grief. Tears leaked gently down her cheeks, and down below Janine nodded approvingly. This was the moment of transcendence, after all. They would believe it was shame, or perhaps heavenly forgiveness. Witzgenstein could turn these tears to whatever purpose she wanted.

  In truth, she wept for them. For what lay in their futures, what Witzgenstein would lead them to, and do to them, and all the ways she would sicken their minds. It was an easy thing to fall backwards, it just took a pyre and a leader willing to watch it burn. People could be bonded in rage without a moment's thought, worked like clay into any shape desired.