I throw my head back and laugh. Poor James!
"Do you see me now, you little shits?" I shout up at the sky. "Do you see me coming?"
Nobody answers. I wonder if a bomb will come. Of course, they could have bombed me at any time.
Then a voice does come.
"Amo," it says. A woman? "Welcome. I'm going to have to ask you to stand your army down."
For a moment I blink, not quite certain I've actually heard what I just heard. I rub my eyes and look around, then see them.
They're on the road below, having emerged from behind the bends of the ocean's path; three people dressed in black bunker suits.
My demons and lepers watch them. Probably they don't know what to make of them. Doubtless those suits are exuding shields that protect, or confuse, some such shit. As for me, I can't believe it. I feel a teeth-gnashing anger. I feel a bizarre kind of joy. I don't know what to feel, but here are people!
It's been so long since I saw people.
I bound down the mountain ecstatically, not sure if I'm planning to hug or kill them. Maybe both. When I finally hit the road, staggering on the uneven surface, they take a step back. It's good that they're afraid. They're holding rifles, which is proper, as I'm quite a threat. There's some kind of static buzz around them, a feeling in the air like a bunker shield.
"Here you are," I say, reveling in the moment, spreading my arms. "I found you!"
One of the black figures steps forward. The helmet has a glass faceplate, which turns transparent as a light comes on inside, revealing a beautiful, olive-complexioned face with dark eyes and lustrous black hair. She holds out one black-gloved hand toward me.
"Welcome, Amo," she says. "My name is Rachel Heron. Welcome to the Redoubt."
ANNA
4. JUMP
On the path to save Istanbul, Anna jumped -
- and landed surrounded by rusted cars on a long gray meadow of road, with Peters stumbling behind her and the troop of lepers fritzing like a drunken fog all around, and then jumped -
- to a dark living room smelling of mold, with faint ribbons of light leaking in through the mildewed lace curtains, where one of the lepers stood comically on a faded pink sofa and she jumped -
- onto a wide escarpment of sand by a lake where tiny gray crabs were scuttling madly away, like a cover pulled back off the land, and jumped -
- and jumped -
- and on each jump there was the same plunge into icy dark as her body sucked up into the line, and the staticky shivers rinsing over her, and the knock at the door.
Of course, there was no door. There was no house, no hallway, no sound, but still the knock came, and after each knock she laid her hand on a handle that wasn't there, and opened it without opening it, all the while knowing with a failure-defying certainty that he would be right there outside, grinning and waiting, but she would never see him because-
She landed.
In a field. On a mountain. In a silent schoolyard, with Peters gasping and her lepers fritzing. She'd take a second and grit her teeth, but a second only, then she'd jump them all again without any time to rest. Somewhere out there the shadow SEAL was sending bombs, and thousands of people in bunkers could die at any minute, and only she could stop it.
She jumped, and every jump dislocated her thinking and thinned out her sense of reality, making her lost within the emptiness of the line. Was there a knock? Was there a voice? Was it really him or some dreadful fantasy?
After perhaps a hundred jumps she landed, rocked in position, and didn't jump again immediately. Peters was vomiting on his knees nearby. She felt sickly and weak herself; the world was bleary and unfocused, as if seen through a dusty looking glass, but she could tell they were somewhere in a field, overgrown with a tangled crop of poppies and maize. Peters was a pale zigzag on the brown clay ground, shuddering amidst the crisp curls of dried poppy leaves.
"I'm fine," he managed, between gurgling, panting heaves. "We can, we should…"
Anna looked away.
Was that a knock?
She ran her fingers over the fat kernels of maize on their golden stems, and started toward the sound.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
The sound of it resounded in her head. The garbled undergrowth yielded to her passage with a satisfying creak as old stalks cracked. Her vision resolved slowly, and she paused briefly to study a particularly tall stalk of maize, considering its sheer golden stem, its boastful head of auburn seeds. It was strange to think that each seed held within it a world of its own, full of possibility, just like the T4. The possibilities unnerved her so much that the sky swirled and she staggered sideways, crushing a wavering path.
Was that another knock? She turned and listened for it, but this time no echo came.
"The wheat fields of Elysium," came his voice, drifting to her in the whisper of fat green poppy heads rubbing against spiky maize. "Just like in Gladiator."
Ravi.
She clutched a thick bundle of stalks for balance, popping a few maize kernels out with her thumbnail. They were as hard as little rocks, too spiky to crush between finger and thumb. She popped one in her mouth and bit down, just to feel something real. It tasted of bitterness.
"It's not doing good things to Peters," the voice mused. "All this jumping. It's not doing good things to you."
Anna spat the kernel bits out, not certain what she was hearing.
"Ravi," she whispered.
"Anna," he answered, "I'm right here."
She looked around, but he wasn't there. Of course not. She hurried forward through the stalks blindly, as if she might find him and somehow answer the knock, but of course she couldn't, and every step toward an impossible door seemed to dislocate her mind even more.
"Where?" she called.
He didn't answer.
She waged a rampant war through the maize stalks, crunching them under her giant feet. It made no sense at all, but perhaps, somehow, the jumps had done something good. Perhaps she'd brought him back with her, and dragged him out, or done something to bring him peace…
"It is the jumps," Ravi whispered from behind. "But they're not helping either of us."
Anna emerged into a small clearing in the maize, and stopped. Here the wild grass had been tamped down in a twisted pattern, like the photos of UFO crop circles that Ravi used to delight in. In the center lay the old corpse of a large animal, probably a wild horse, with its rib cage picked clean by scavengers. She looked at the taut gray skin of the horse's skull, into the dark hollows where its eyes had once been, and imagined a congregation of other animals gathering here as if at church, flattening the maize to worship at the altar of this strange, dead god.
That was the madness of the jumps talking. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. She tried to root herself in her body, in her feet touching the ground, in the warmth of the sun on her cheeks. This had to be real.
"Calm down," came Ravi's whispery voice. "Think."
She counted her breaths. She focused on one spot and made it stand still.
"You're too open, when you jump," Ravi said. "The line will rip you apart." It felt like his voice was coming from just behind her. Or perhaps inside her. She resisted the urge to turn around, because he wouldn't be there, and that would be just like racing after another knock.
"I don't think-" she began, then paused, carefully weighing what she wanted to say, trying to frame thoughts she'd never had before into words. "There's something real, out there. There's a knock, for me. What is it?"
"It's the dead calling," Ravi answered, floating around her now. "On the line. Think of it like one of the old data 'clouds', distributed on the Internet. When you jump, you upload yourself into the line, then download yourself when you land."
His voice was insistently real. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and concentrated. He was talking about a world that had rarely been real for her, a world of video games and social media and geo-positioning, the world he'd hidde
n in to keep himself sane through so many solitary years.
"And you're up there," she said, half a question, half a guess, as she felt her way through the memory of so many knocks, handles, doors. "I'm passing you by each time."
The sense of him smiling came down to her.
"Sweetie, you are the talk of the town up there. Everybody hears when you come charging through. It's premiere night at the Chinese Theater; lights, camera, action. I just get dragged along in your wake."
Anna steeled herself. Wake. Chinese Theater. She flicked a maize kernel at the dead horse, and it tickled into the skeleton's pelvic girdle with a pleasant, rustly sound. She had to get a grip. They'd only made a hundred jumps, and there were hundreds more to go. That was real. Bombs were real.
But maybe this was real too. On the mountain when Ravi's voice had come to her, she hadn't thought about the reality of it too much. In victory, it had seemed appropriate. But now, when she was so confused, when Peters was falling apart, what was it for? Was it even real, or was she just talking to some echo of her own dislocated mind?
"It's hard," she said. "This."
"I know. I'm sorry. But it's going to stop, soon."
She gulped. Tears welled in her eyes, though she didn't know the reason. Did she want it to stop? Would that mean she never heard from Ravi again? "Why?"
"Because I'm getting better at it. I think I can stop the knocks, from being dragged along when you come. And you're getting better at resisting."
Anna looked around. Was that something she wanted? She was too confused to understand.
"I don't want that. I want you."
"But I'm gone, Anna. And this is hurting you, and Peters, and me. You're torn, because that's what the line does, sweetie. There's too much at stake."
"You're at stake," she blurted.
He laughed, though his voice was fading now. "I'll be here, waiting, at least the parts of me that matter. When the time comes."
"When will that be?"
His voice turned sad. "I hope, not for a long time. Many years yet. I hope you know how much I loved you. I won't knock again. Don't answer the door. Look after yourself."
Anna gasped. "Ravi," she called, as the sense of him drifted away. "Ravi, please! I miss you so much."
His faint voice came a final time, like mist on the warm summer's air. "So miss me. Let me miss you."
After that, no answer came, and Anna wept beside the bones of the horse.
* * *
Gradually she calmed down. The worst of the confusion ebbed away, and his voice echoed like a distant memory already, drifting in the back channels of her mind.
So it was.
She squeezed a poppy head until white sap oozed out. She breathed in the intoxicating sappy scent. This was real. This was what mattered now.
"Anna!"
Peters' voice came, calling from nearby, along with the splintery ruckus of him stumbling through the dry maize stalks.
"Get out of my way, monster," he said absently, and Anna felt him passing by one of her lepers. They were like antennae to her now, grounding her in the many layers of the air. Of the line? How strange, to feel that way. What kind of world had the world now become?
"Over here," she called.
"Anna," he shouted, putting a brave spin on the sickness he surely still felt. There was a sad kind of relief there, too, that she hadn't abandoned him again. He emerged through the maize wall and into the clearing looking drunk and sick. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips were cracked, and his skin was a translucent-looking gray. She'd done this to him.
"How many jumps is that?" he asked in a hoarse voice. He looked like he was in a lot of pain, and that hurt her too. She'd done it, chasing the knocks. Ravi was right. She was jumping recklessly.
"A hundred, perhaps," she said. Producing words in response to him felt hard. They were both out of sync, somehow.
He came over to stand weaving beside her, and looked down at the dead horse for a long moment. "I see why this place appeals to you," he said. A dry joke.
She grunted.
"Did you do it?"
She didn't have the energy for humor, though he was trying. Nothing was as it should be. Her skin itched, like it no longer fit, as if all she wanted to do was step outside of herself and take up this new mantle of power and make Peters better, though she didn't know how.
"The jumps will be better now," she said, focusing on something she thought they both could understand. "Smoother. I promise."
He weaved a little, struggling to focus on her. "You figured some new thing out?"
She flashed him a brave smile. His little Anna. That would help him now, even if it wasn't what she felt. She had energy enough to give that.
"I did."
He smiled in return. Perhaps he saw through that façade. It made her glad, in a way, and she let the childish smile drop.
"Ravi," she said. "I've been hearing him, like a knock. Every jump I was chasing him."
"Ravi," Peters answered, as if this made abundant sense. He didn't understand, but she knew he was trying. "The air is thick, now, Anna. The dead walk with us. They've been here for thirteen years, and we just see them now. I am not surprised."
A different kind of tears pricked at her eyes. She willed them back. "He says he'll try to stop knocking. But it's hard. He misses me too."
Peters laughed. "Who wouldn't! You are special."
She chuckled through the rising tears. "You're just saying that because you'll be stranded here without me."
He nodded solemnly. "Yes, that is true. Where are we?"
Anna shrugged. Jumps through the hydrogen line didn't come with a precise map. "A tenth of the way there, I think? Probably still in Romania."
He nodded. "We have many jumps to go. A thousand. Perhaps you should leave me behind."
She rested her hand on his upper arm. "Oh, I will." It was meant to come out as a kind of joke, because of course she meant to leave him behind at some point; they couldn't jump like this together indefinitely, but instead it came out showing some of her own frustration, and that dismayed her. Quickly she tried to undo any hurt it might have caused. "They'll need you, where we're going."
Again he gave her that smile; so much faith, and so faithful. "Anna. Please. I know you. You are a general in this war, now. I am just a soldier. We are still the best of friends. But you do not need to pretend with me."
She squeezed his arm. Peters was wise, and kind. She thought about how lucky Abigail had been, and how she would have loved to meet her, and any children she and Peters might have made together.
"We need to go," she said.
"Only nine hundred more jumps," he said. "I am ready."
Anna nodded, and took his hand, then reached out through the layers and gave that familiar little twist-
* * *
The jumps sped up.
The knock on the door went away, and the sense of Ravi didn't come again. Each jump seemed to last seconds, but who knew, really? With no radio to communicate with Istanbul, there was no way to know. Perhaps each jump was a week long, a month, a year...
They landed beside a tranquil blue pond in a forested idyll. They landed in the middle of a little town with banana-yellow plaster on every building, and Anna had the sense that at any minute the church tower ahead was going to chime and the doors would open and the people would spill out. They landed in a city where the road was floored with shards of weatherworn glass.
Cracked roads met across a hilltop slathered with creeping purple bramble.
A family of brown toads peered up at her with nonchalant disinterest in the bogs of a foul-smelling swamp.
Off the steep side of a gray slate ravine, a tumbling waterfall made a beautiful rainbow in the bright spray.
From the top floor of a tall office building they looked out over the sad giants of dusty skyscrapers, stretching away through the broken windows.
The jumps sped into a blur, as the real world and the deep darkness intertwine
d like maize and poppies, like Amo's Deepcraft world written across reality, bringing the line down to earth and earth up to the line, growing faster until-
She collapsed on gravel with a gasp.
She could feel the hard ground and the sharpness of individual points digging into her back. Peters lay beside her, flat out and gasping. The lepers stood nearby, as disinterested as the toads.
"Oh my … God," Peters croaked.
"God," Anna echoed feebly. The sense of the great depths beneath her reverberated massively, bringing a swimming sense of vertigo. How far she could rise. How far she could fall. It was a tightrope, really, with nothingness on all sides.
Bowed beneath the weight, she pushed herself swaying to her feet and looked ahead. The massive metal doorway into the mountain was there, as was the spreading delta of gray bodies. They were still trapped, as they'd been when she'd passed this way before; half in phase toward ocean-hood. Some were still chewed up in old tire ruts, dead and gory, where Amo had run them over.
It wasn't Istanbul. Istanbul needed her, but for now they could help themselves, and the people trapped in phase here could not. The stakes were too high to let any other SEAL bunker fall by the wayside.
"Brezno," she muttered, and started forward at a lurch.
INTERLUDE 2
Amo laughed in Rachel Heron's faceplate.
She stood before him at the outer edge of the stealth shield, five miles out from the Redoubt, and he laughed. He looked like a madman, dressed in dirty rags and old scars, his hair disheveled and sticking out at crazy angles, more leper than man.
"Welcome?" he repeated, as if that was the most ludicrous thing he'd ever heard. "Seriously? Has he actually sent you out here to welcome me home, Rachel?"
That stymied her for a moment; not only the question or the casual, mocking way it was asked, but the blizzard of emotions accompanying it on the line.
It was dizzying. This man, self-styled as 'the Last Mayor of America', was well known to be mad, but knowing about that madness and feeling it up close were two very different things. Her suit didn't do anything to shield her from the raw, writhing passions snaking round him on the hydrogen line, each a probing root looking for a place to bed in.
Last Mayor (Book 9): The Light Page 4
