“Oh,” Martin said. “I don’t really know.”
“One thing at a time, right?” Darla said, and she patted him on the shoulder.
The wheels chirped as she pushed the chair from the room, down the hall, to the back exit where they used to exchange books and notes. Outside, there was a freshly blazed, firmly packed dirt trail, and it was a short trip along the trail to a hilly clearing, where pieces of limestone stuck up from the ground. There were names painted on the stones.
Martin saw Felix’s name, and Chet’s. Also Sigrid’s, and Ryan’s, and Cameron’s, and Wendy’s.
“We moved Chet and Felix here from the regular graveyard,” Darla explained. “But it’s all temporary. Until we get their parents back, and they decide what to do with them.”
“What’s that?” Martin pointed to a shovel that was sticking up from the ground like a tree. Its handle was buried in the dirt and its spoon was pointed into the sky.
“Monument to the Diggers,” Darla said. “We went in the mine, you know? Marjorie insisted that we check it out. No bodies in there, just the stuff they brought with them. Weird, huh?”
Martin nodded. He had thought about that fact a lot, and perhaps he had been thinking about it for the past three months as he dreamt the same dream over and over again. Because he was pretty sure he knew what had happened to them.
“Is Lane still around?” he asked.
“One thing that hasn’t changed,” Darla explained. “She hasn’t left the school since you last saw her. People say they see her sneaking around town at night. Hard to believe, though. She’d block out the moon!”
“You haven’t changed either, have you, Darla?”
Darla winked and turned the wheelchair toward another trail, which led to town. “Sweetie,” she said. “I don’t have time to change. Making movies and driving and looking after your sleepy butt can keep a girl plenty busy.”
Xibalba was a flurry of activity. People of all shapes and sizes shuffled between the remaining buildings. Some were in groups, led by kids Martin recognized, like Riley and Gabe, who pointed to landmarks and spoke in amplified voices. A man in a ruffled suit wandered aimlessly and shouted to no one in particular, “Don’t believe them! It’s damnation, people. We’re in Hades!”
Before the man could say much more, Tiberia appeared from a nearby building, accompanied by a group of stone-faced boys. She approached the man and spoke to him calmly, though Martin couldn’t hear what she was saying. Whatever it was appeared to appease him. He smiled, and she put an arm around him and led him away.
As Darla pushed Martin through town, his eyes jumped from new face to new face, and he pondered the countless stories the faces guarded, but he didn’t have the courage to introduce himself to anyone.
“It’s kind of a transfer station,” Darla explained as she waved toward where all the torched houses had once been. Demolition had left vacant lots, and nothing was being built in their place.
“How long do people stay?” Martin asked.
“Depends,” Darla said. “There’s a bit of a system. They’re greeted by someone they know, then they watch the movie, then they … Well, every case is different. There have been some difficulties, obviously. Violence.”
“They watch the movie I watched?” Martin asked.
“Not exactly,” she said, pointing the chair toward the movie theater.
The lobby of the theater had been redesigned once again. It was airy and clean and empty except for a single desk. Christianna sat behind the desk, poised with a pen, a leather-bound book open below her hand. A line had formed in front of the desk, and people were approaching in twos. They would say a few words; she would write in the book; and they would proceed into the theater.
When it was Darla and Martin’s turn, Christianna hardly looked up. “Hello, Darla. So you have finally brought someone, yeah? Name?”
“Martin Maple,” Darla said proudly.
Christianna pulled her pen back and leaned forward to peer over the desk at the wheelchair. “My goodness,” she said. “He is awake. Well, this is very good news, is it not?”
“Very good news,” Darla said firmly.
“Hello, Christianna,” Martin said.
“Please, please, go on in,” Christianna said.
“No,” Darla said. “Let’s get the whole dog and pony show. I’m sure he’d like to see how it’s done.”
“Okay, then,” Christianna said, wielding the pen. “What is your full name?”
“Martin Maple.”
“What is your age?”
“I’m …” Martin had to think about this one. His birthday hadn’t come, had it? “Still thirteen,” he said with a fair bit of confidence.
“Where are you from, Martin Maple?”
This one would require even more thought, or perhaps introspection. “Here, I suppose,” Martin said. “Xibalba.”
“We call it Ararat now,” Christianna said. “Like where Noah finished his trip. I wanted to name it Asgard, but no one cares about Norse mythology around here.” She shrugged and smiled and she wrote in the book.
It was dark inside—not pitch-black, but dark. Lanterns were scattered along the aisles, and cigarette lighters flicked to life among the seats as people huddled together and whispered. Martin’s wheelchair fit in a nook in the back, and Darla sat next to him and used her hand to rock the chair gently on its wheels. Martin might have stopped her if it weren’t so soothing.
After a few minutes, Christianna entered and paced through the room, dimming all the lanterns. When she dimmed the last one, she closed the door and stood next to it. “Please. Quiet,” she announced. “Our film is about to begin.”
The chatter trickled away, revealing the rumble of a generator. Then the screen was struck with a punch of white light, which expanded and swirled and then dissolved into a soup of color. When the color became crisp, when it sharpened into focus, there was the image of Darla, sitting cross-legged in an armchair.
“Greetings,” she said. “My name is Darla Barnes. If you’re watching this, then it means you made it back from wherever the heck you were. You know what? It’s mighty fine to see you.”
The image on the screen shifted to shots of the town—the crumbled houses being cleared away, the muddy trails and budding trees, the remaining fortresses of brick that were the library and hospital and bowling alley.
“This is Ararat,” Darla’s voice narrated. “Not exactly paradise, but it’s the place we’ve called home for almost three years. We used to call it Xibalba, and it was cuter than this, trust us. But we’ve had some problems. There were incidents.”
The screen went black. The sound of Kid Godzilla’s engine dominated the sound track. When the light returned, the audience was looking at a highway and a flat, endless landscape pocked with immobile cars. The shot was taken through the windshield of the monster truck. It bobbed up and down as the truck lumbered forward.
“These are your roads,” Darla narrated. “Talk about gridlock! Work is under way to clear them, but for now Kid Godzilla is king. It’s taken its fair share of licks, but the Kid can still roar. And every three weeks I drive it loaded with your lists and I come back with your loot. We have a pamphlet to explain, but for now, know this. We’ll reunite you with your friends and family as soon as we can.”
The screen went black again and music swelled, a swooning mix of strings and piano. Martin recognized the tune as one Darla had piped into the bowling alley on the night of their date. When the images came back, they were of cities, colonized by weeds. Cars everywhere. Buses on their sides. Shattered windows and tiny tornados of paper. Deer and wild dogs strolling carefree over the concrete and glass.
“Just so we’re clear: these are your cities,” Darla narrated.
Next the images were of small towns, of main streets abandoned, of front porches broken and covered in leaves, of ransacked general stores, of cornfields and orchards left untended.
“And these are your villages.”
“This is us. You left us. We don’t know where you went. We don’t know why you went. But we brought you back. And this is the world. Welcome.”
Black.
There would be one last stop. The sun had set, and Martin was due back at the hospital, but he needed to see the machine. It was in Town Square, dented and scratched, though otherwise intact. Leading up to it, a series of metal gates formed a trail of switchbacks. Martin had seen a similar setup at Impossible Island; crowd control was the purpose.
Darla lifted a chain that hung over the entrance, and pushed Martin inside. “You should see this place during the day,” she said. “Line around the block and getting longer by the minute. Can’t have people here at night, though. Too dangerous for Trent. At sundown, they move the line out to the tent city in the fields behind Chet’s old house. We call it Nylon Vegas, and what happens in Nylon Vegas … well, let’s just say that funny business doesn’t fly near the machine.”
As they weaved their way along, Martin read a series of signs that decorated the path.
From this point, your wait will be three hours.
We regret to inform you that we can summon only one person at a time.
Two objects per person per day, please. No exceptions!
Two boys stood at the entrance to the machine. Martin didn’t recognize them, but their faces lit up when they saw him.
“Holy cow, is this really him?” the shorter boy said.
“Martin Maple, in the flesh,” Darla replied.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” the other boy said, putting out his hand. His shirt rose and Martin saw a sliver of steel peek out from the waistband of his jeans.
“The same,” Martin said with a grimace. The bones in his palm had been temporarily rearranged by the boy’s enthusiasm.
“Is he awake?” Darla asked.
“Getting ready for bed,” the first boy said. “Long day today.”
“Mr. Maple would like to see him,” Darla explained.
The two looked at each other. The taller one nodded. “I think we can make an exception for that,” the shorter one said.
Inside the machine, they found Trent stomping methodically on a plastic set of bellows to pump up a rubber air mattress. Hearing the door, he stopped and turned around. His eyes were watery and bloodshot and it took him more than a moment to recognize who was sitting in the wheelchair. According to Darla, he saw dozens of new people every day.
“Martin?” he asked.
“Hello, Trent,” Martin said. “I hear you’ve been hard at work.”
“I’ve …” A combination of guilt and pride colored Trent’s face.
“I’m impressed,” Martin said. “You’ve done a fantastic job.”
“Thank you,” Trent said.
“He’s here twenty-four seven, guarded by his cousins,” Darla explained. “No one gets to see him work, but, boy, does he work wonders.”
“I don’t do anything except what Martin did,” Trent said humbly. “I’m like a substitute teacher.”
“You do more than that, I suspect. How do you …? What happens here exactly?” Martin asked.
“Well, it’s pretty simple, actually.” Trent explained, “Every morning, people line up outside. I place their objects in the basin, run through the procedure, and summon their loved ones. No one else is allowed inside, so no one else knows how I do it. I summoned my cousins first. Now they take shifts guarding the machine and watching the line and making sure everyone is orderly. Most of the time, people are.”
“What if someone gets out of control?” Martin asked.
“We don’t like it, but we have guns,” Trent sighed. “We’ve been lucky so far, but they’re demanding new machines in new places. It can’t go on like this forever.”
“No. I guess it can’t,” Martin said. His arms were just strong enough to push him from his chair onto his feet. Standing for the first time in months, Martin felt as if his chest and shoulders weighed a thousand pounds.
“Martin,” Darla chided. “Dr. Bethany doesn’t think it’s time.”
“I think it’s time that Trent went home,” Martin said as he toddled forward. He placed a hand against the wall to brace himself. “It’s my responsibility now.”
“Oh no, Martin,” Trent said. “It’s an honor to run the machine for you, and if my mom wants you to rest, then I think you should rest.”
“I’m sure your mother also wants to spend time with her son,” Martin said with a smile. “Go … just as soon as you finish pumping up that bed. I’m sleeping here tonight.”
They let him. After all, this had been the plan. The night of the disastrous dinner, Trent had run the machine out of necessity. Things had gained momentum from there, but it was never supposed to be his calling. It had always been Martin’s mission. Trent was happy to hand back the reins.
“You remember how to do it?” Trent asked as he left.
“It would be impossible for me to forget,” Martin said.
Yes, the procedure was written in Martin’s bones. He didn’t doubt that he could do it in his sleep, and once he was alone, he thought maybe that was what it would come to. He hardly had the strength to keep his eyes open. Yet through those three months of suffering the same dream, there had been an idea rattling in Martin’s mind, something impossible to shake. It gave him the strength to put his wobbly hands on the controls.
Martin turned the Birthday Dials. He set them to the morning after he arrived on the mainland, after he had outrun the bears, after the campfire and the conversation with Kelvin. He set them to the moment when Kelvin had left him alone in the woods. Then he crawled back to the wheelchair and he retrieved the shoe box of metal bits and bottles that Darla had placed on the shelf beneath the seat.
The bottles had been cleaned, but they were still brown and warped, hardly the glittery little jewels that had once sat in that strange dollhouse. Martin took all nine and he struggled his way through the interior door, to the machine’s heart. He placed the first one in the basin.
It wasn’t until the fourth one that it worked. And thank God it did. Martin was at the point of collapse when he dropped the pendulum that fourth time and was greeted with a tick, tick, tick and a whir. But also the light. Also the laugh.
In the heart of the machine, next to the basin, Kelvin Rice had emerged. The boy tried to pry open his eyelids, and Martin spoke to him.
“Are you okay?”
“That you, Martin?” Kelvin asked. “You been following me?”
“When did you last see me?” Martin asked.
“Weird question, buddy. I saw you like two minutes ago, when we traded goodbyes,” Kelvin said as he finally got his eyes open. He took in his surroundings with a suspicious squint. “Though I’m drawing a blank as to how we got here.”
“This is the machine.”
“Is this what I was supposed to be looking for?” Kelvin asked. “Nigel said I’d know it when I saw it. For a little while I thought he might be talking about you. But I gotta say, this thing is a lot more impressive than you, Marty.”
“You’re done looking,” Martin said. “There’s only one other thing for you to do now.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re going to lift me into that wheelchair, and you’re going to push me to the school.”
“School?” Kelvin asked. “Which school?”
“You’ll know once we get outside. There’s someone you need to see.”
As Kelvin helped Martin get situated in the chair, Martin reached over to the Birthday Dials. He adjusted them until they were once again set on the Day.
As soon as Lane heard Kelvin’s voice, she turned the lock and opened the door to room 17. Martin p
ushed off with his toes, scooting his chair back along the linoleum floor, and let the two of them look at each other.
They couldn’t have been more different in appearance—Kelvin pale, tattered, and gaunt; Lane dark, sleek, and curved. She held her tears back, a battle that quivered through her cheeks. She reached forward and touched him lightly on the ribs.
“Hey, kid,” Kelvin said.
“Hey, kid,” Lane said back.
“I’m not sure how I got here. I can’t say I understand what’s going on,” Kelvin said.
“I can’t say I do either,” she said. “But you’re here. Standing right in front of me.”
“I am.”
“I got some peanuts inside,” she told him.
As Kelvin followed Lane into the room, Martin hovered in the doorway.
“Hello, Martin,” Lane said. “I’m glad to see you’re still around. Crazy world you dug up out there.”
“I’m …,” Martin started, but what he saw beyond the door derailed his train of thought.
It was a scanty low-ceilinged room, the antithesis of Lane’s previous abode. The walls were brick, and the floor was concrete. Candles in glass vases decorated ledges, and trunks, and wooden crates. A Ping-Pong table, with a stack of boxes on it, was pushed into the corner. The boxes held kits for model cars and boats and trains. Lane pulled a woven wool blanket off a grimy plaid sofa and draped it over her shoulders. She patted one of the seat cushions.
“I can’t believe it,” Kelvin said as he spun in circles, marveling at every object in the room. “It looks just like my basement.”
“We had a fire,” Lane told him. “Your house didn’t make it. It took some looking. It took some lugging. But I found stuff that matches pretty closely.”
“It’s perfect,” Kelvin said. “You did this for me?”
“No, not really,” Lane admitted as she picked up a wooden bowl full of peanuts. She gave it a shake in front of Kelvin’s chest, and the peanuts scuffed and scraped the wood. “I did it for myself. Those nights hanging out in your basement were some of the best times I’ve ever had.”
The Only Ones Page 22
