by Hugh Howey
“And it could happen here?” one of the boys asked. “At any time?”
Cole nodded. He looked to Marco, only to find the boy smiling in a different way; he seemed genuinely pleased.
“How do they know it was a black hole?” another boy asked.
Cole turned to address the kid, suddenly feeling quite older than the other boys his age.
“They finally found the spot where it entered the Earth,” he said. “At first, they had looked directly opposite the blast, down in the Indian ocean, but what were the chances that the black hole passed directly through the center of the Earth? It was silly to look there.” He stirred his soup. “But then, in the middle of the twenty-third century, some guys were digging for bones in Africa when they found charred rock that only looked two hundred years old. They thought it was meteor rock, so they called these astronomers in, who took one look and realized a black hole had passed through.”
“How would you stop it?” the boy beside Cole asked. “There has to be some way to protect ourselves.”
Cole took a sip of his soup, ignoring the fact that it had grown cold and that there were soggy crumbs from Marco’s roll in it. “You can’t stop them,” he said. “They can come anytime and from anywhere. There are probably billions or trillions of the things roaming the universe since the time of Creation. They’re like cosmic cattle, grazing on everything.”
A new fear settled over the boys, quite stronger than the one Marco’s presence had brought. Cole looked to Marco to see the older boy beaming. He winked at Cole and stood up.
“You aced your assignment,” Marco said. He wiped his chin with his napkin, then threw it into his untouched bowl of soup. “Be sure to take up my tray as well, slumrat.”
And with that, Marco spun and hurried out of the dining hall as suddenly and swiftly as he’d arrived. Cole watched him go, the folds of the boy’s cloak swaying wide with his turn, then settling down all around him, the blackness swallowing him whole.
•• SIX MONTHS LATER ••
“Do you really expect this court to believe that?”
The lawyer in the black suit waved his arm out over the pews.
“Are you going to tell these families that their loved ones died because of an innocuous conversation that took place over some soup? Is that also what you’re going to tell those families in New Zealand? That this wasn’t the work of God, or some coincidence too extreme to trust, but the scheming of some homeless kids taking advantage of the hospitality and kindness of the Church?”
“I’m telling you what happened.” Cole looked up at the judge. “That’s what I swore to do.”
The judge squinted at Cole, as if looking for something difficult to discern.
“I move to have this case against my client dropped,” the lawyer said. He walked away from Cole and back toward his wide table, staffed plenty with suits. “If this is the extent of the evidence, the hearsay of one boy when the other isn’t here to provide his side of the story—”
“Denied,” the judge said. He held out a hand to calm down Cole’s lawyer, who had risen from her seat and seemed fit to explode. “And I’ll caution you, Counselor, not to employ theatrics for my jury’s benefit. Now, if you have no further questions—”
The lawyer spun away from his desk. “Oh, if we’re going to persist in this, I certainly have other questions.” He stalked toward Cole, his finger jabbing the air. “I’d like to probe into the charges that were dropped, the charges that prompted you to turn on the man who so kindly took you in. I think if there’s any real conspiracy here, that’s where we’ll find it.”
“My client doesn’t have to answer those questions,” Cole’s lawyer protested. She flipped through the papers spread across her desk. “It’s clear in the agreement he signed—”
“A boy is dead,” the other lawyer said, whirling on her. “Another boy is dead, and now his name is being besmirched without him here to clear it.”
“There is ample evidence—” the judge began, but the stirrings in the congregation-like crowd made it hard to hear. He reached for his gavel and banged the wooden puck on his dais so hard, it leapt up in the air.
“Order,” he demanded. “Settle down or I’ll clear every last one of you from my court.”
Cole watched the scene from the stand, his hands clasping the ledge before him as if the room itself might start spinning.
“The jury deserves an answer if they are to take this witness seriously,” the lawyer said. He approached the judge’s bench, his hands raised and his shoulders up by his neck.
The judge pointed the gavel at him. “I’ll allow you to proceed, but do so carefully.”
“Your honor—” Cole’s lawyer began.
“He may establish the witness’ reliability as long as he does not ask the boy to indict himself.”
The lawyer in the black suit grinned.
“Proceed,” the judge said.
The male lawyer cleared his throat. He walked up to the side of Cole’s witness box and rested his elbows on its ledge. He leaned toward Cole’s microphone and looked out over the audience and the jury box.
“Please tell us,” the lawyer said, his voice slow and amplified by the microphone. “Tell us why we should trust you, when you admitted to the cops that you killed this other boy, this Marco.”
“Objection, your Honor!”
The gavel rang out like a gunshot.
“Why did you kill him?” the lawyer shouted into the mic.
Another gunshot, the round gavel block leaping up like a spent cartridge.
“Order!”
Hundreds of simultaneous gasps seemed to suck the air from the room.
“Order!”
Another crack of wood. Grumblings turned to shouts.
“Order in this court!”
The only people sitting still were Father Picoult, his arms crossed over his chest, and poor Cole, his memory tumbling with awful answers to the question. To that question, and questions he was thankful nobody knew to ask—
9 · The Barrio · Two Weeks After the Blast
“Do you wanna do burritos?”
Joanna tugged Cole toward one of the open stalls lining the busy marketplace. A group of men stood by the ordering window eating wraps the size of soda cans.
“I don’t eat there,” Cole said, shaking his head.
Joanna looked from the large menu above the ordering window to Cole. “Why?”
“The owner’s name is Mendonça,” Cole said.
Joanna pointed to the man behind the counter with the stained white smock and cook’s hat. “That’s your father?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Cole said. “I never knew my dad. My policy is to not do business with anyone named Mendonça, just to be sure.”
Joanna seemed deflated, then confused. “But that’s gotta be like, the second most common surname in the barrio.”
Cole shrugged. “There’s lots of places I don’t go.”
“So you really don’t know who he is? What about your mom? Or any siblings?”
“Jeez,” Cole said.
“I’m sorry.” Joanna stepped under the cover of an awning pasted with Chinese symbols. She stuck her head in the ordering window, then turned, smiling. “Definitely not a Mendonça,” she said. “Is Chinese okay?”
“Sure.” Cole raised his hands. “As long as you’re paying.”
“I told you I was.” She winked at him and smiled. Cole let her order for them both while he watched the busy street, everyone going about their business as if the Miracle two weeks ago hadn’t happened. Or maybe, the bustle and energy of the barrio had increased from the weeks before. It wasn’t as if nothing had happened to the barrio, but something… wonderful.
“Let’s sit over there.”
Cole took a carton of noodles with a pair of chopsticks sticking out the top from Joanna. She sat on one side of a rickety table and Cole quickly sat down on the other to balance her out. Joanna extracted her chopsticks, but didn’
t dig into her noodles. She held them in the crook of her hand, her delicate fingers cradling them, the tips opening and closing like a butterfly’s wings. Cole shoved a mouthful of noodles in his mouth and watched her. The smile on Joanna’s face filled him with a warmth he thought he understood, but a dread he couldn’t quite place.
“Thanks for lunch,” Cole said between bites, wondering if maybe he wasn’t being gracious enough and that was the reason for her mood.
Joanna nodded. She still hadn’t touched her food. “You’re welcome,” she said.
“You said you wanted to talk about something?” He took another bite.
Joanna looked up at the underside of the tattered canopy with the Chinese script. Cole saw a film of tears coat her eyes, and he wondered why that seemed to perfectly match the dread he was feeling.
“I’m pregnant,” Joanna said.
Cole gasped, sucking a noodle down the wrong way. A coughing fit ensued. He pounded his chest and looked around for water. Joanna ran and grabbed a paper cup and filled it from a hanging orange cooler. As Cole hacked and wheezed—his throat scratched and itching something awful—he considered the ridiculousness of Joanna tending to him at that moment. He seized the water gratefully and drank most of it in a rapid series of desperate gulps.
“Slowly,” Joanna said. Her smile hadn’t changed, but the tears were gone from her eyes, even as a different set of them rolled down Cole’s cheeks from the burn in his throat.
“Who?” Cole wheezed, his voice a dry rasp. He knew it wasn’t his. They’d only kissed the once, and just barely. He was pretty sure it took something other than a kiss. Right?
Joanna sat down beside him, threatening to teeter them and the table right over. She rubbed his back with one hand and took the empty cup away with the other. Cole felt the years between them yawn wide as she tended to him. Or maybe it was that he still largely felt like a child, and Joanna was saying she was with one.
“It’s nobody’s,” Joanna said with a smile. “It’s—” She shook her head and let out a little laugh. “Well, I don’t even want to suggest it,” she said, “but it must be a Miracle. I’ve never… done that… with anyone.”
Cole glanced down at the empty cup in his hand. Joanna grabbed the cup, twirled from the table, filled it back to the brim from the cooler, and returned. Cole took a sip, letting the cool, crisp water coat his throat. The man behind the counter yelled something about one cup per meal, and Joanna apologized.
“How do you know?” Cole asked. Now that the shock of her revelation was wearing off, his rational mind was assuring the rest of himself that she was simply wrong, or perhaps she was lying about having never done… that. Whatever that was.
“Sensors in the toilets look for these things,” she said. “They notify the nuns. It takes a couple weeks for the hormones to change.”
“A couple of weeks,” Cole intoned.
Joanna nodded. She reached for her noodles, then stopped herself and folded her hands together instead.
“Who else knows?” Cole asked.
“Father Picoult. A few of the Sisters, I suppose. Soon, I expect everyone will. Cole, they’re gonna make an announcement next week. I’m—”
The tears returned, welling up at the bottoms of Joanna’s lids and spilling over. Cole put his cup down and wrapped his hands around hers, an act of intimacy they had shared often in the past weeks.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. He suddenly felt like this person he was infatuated with, who he’d scarcely known for more than a month and had barely spent time with until two weeks ago, was so much older and different than him. Cole wanted to wrap her in his arms and run away from her all at once. His stomach and heart were at odds.
“I’m scared,” Joanna finally said. She brushed the tears off her perfect cheeks and wiped her hands on her shorts. “I mean, I’m excited and all, but I’m terrified of what this means.”
“I don’t understand,” Cole said. “What does this mean?”
Joanna laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh of humor—it was more like a release of nerves.
“Do you think this is how Mary felt when she found out?” Joanna wiped at her cheeks. “Father Picoult said she was probably around fourteen or fifteen, and poor, just like me. I’ve never thought of that before, you know? I think of her later, all powerful and strong and wise and His mother.”
Cole felt a lead weight sink through his being and settle in the pit of his abdomen.
“Wait,” he said. “You don’t really think—?”
“I begged and begged and Father Picoult finally said I could take you to lunch and tell you on my terms, away from the Church.” Joanna glanced around at the bustling market. “But I don’t think we’ll be able to do this much more. He said everything has to be perfect with this birth. He said there’s no mortal father, but that since you were there with me that day—” Joanna’s cheeks flushed, and Cole felt his own temperature rise. “Anyway, I think he knows how we feel about each other—”
“How do we feel?” Cole asked. His throat tightened.
“You’ll be my Joseph,” Joanna said, entangling her hands with Cole’s. “Can you imagine what lies ahead? I always thought I was destined for nothing in life, but then… I always felt special somehow. I feel like this was supposed to happen.”
“I don’t understand how you’re pregnant,” Cole said. “I mean, if you’ve never…”
“It was a Miracle,” Joanna said. “Whatever passed through the Earth, whatever hit Zealand and flew through the center of the planet, it came out here in the barrio and it left a baby behind. Our baby. A new King to save us from a universe gone wrong and full of evil.”
Cole glanced down at Joanna’s stomach, even though it bore no sign of anything, much less a miracle. His gaze lingered there a second before wandering out over the alley, over the crowded markets, the smoke and odor of the meal stalls. Everything looked the same, which didn’t match all the new and bizarre feelings and thoughts coursing through his body and brain.
“I’m not even thirteen,” Cole said. He didn’t know when his real birthday was, but the one he had chosen for himself was another eight months away. This couldn’t be happening to him. The black hole had been enough bizarreness for an entire lifetime.
“Father Picoult says men were much more mature at a younger age, back in the olden days. He says that’s how they’ll need to be again when our son arrives.”
“You think it’s a boy?”
For an eye-blink, Cole felt like this child, this unborn being they were speaking of, was really his. His heart swelled with the lie.
“Of course it’s a boy,” Joanna said, her voice cracking. “Cole, you do know who this is, don’t you?”
Cole shook his head.
“This will be the Creator Incarnate,” she said. “The Maker’s Child. The Blessed Return.”
Cole recognized the words, but the tongue suddenly seemed foreign. He didn’t know people really believed that stuff. Then again, what had he seen two weeks ago? A black hole had passed through the Earth, right through its dead center, taking out a hospital in New Zealand that performed abortions and did work with stem cells, and it had exited the Earth right in his barrio, right in front of him. It had destroyed a new research facility set up to study genetically modified foods. That wasn’t a coincidence, was it? Could it be? He ran through the odds in his head, coming back again and again to having witnessed an honest to Gods miracle. And now this?
“Are you okay?” Joanna rubbed his forearm, her other hand holding his. “It was hard for me to believe at first, but Father Picoult and the Sisters will be our guides.”
“Our guides for what?”
Joanna smiled. The two years she had on Cole suddenly seemed like a dozen.
“Our child will be born of a virgin,” she said. “This will be the start of a spiritual awakening. People will believe again, and the Church will grow strong and guide them. Don’t you see? This is why the Gods chose us. You and I are young and
unspoiled. We have not yet been tainted by the world of skeptics and disbelievers—”
Cole shook his head. He thought about all the wrongs he had already committed in such a short life. There’s no way the Gods would pick him, if anything like Gods really existed.
He glanced up at Joanna, fearful she might sense his doubts. Not just of this crazy pregnancy, but much more fundamental ones.
“You should eat,” Cole said. He aimed one of his chopsticks toward Joanna’s untouched carton of noodles.
Joanna smiled. “You’re right,” she said. “I need to eat for both of us.”
••••
Cole noticed the change in the Church as soon as they returned. The Sisters buzzed like bees over the grounds, pruning and weeding and chipping paint. Father Picoult met Joanna and Cole at the gate. He draped his arm protectively over Joanna’s shoulders and smiled fondly at Cole.
“Congratulations,” the Father said.
Cole nodded.
“Now Joanna, why don’t you come inside with me? There are some ancient scriptures I would like to go over with you. Very applicable to what lies ahead for us.”
Joanna smiled and reached for Cole’s hand, as if to drag him along with them.
“Actually,” Father Picoult said, “I think Marco has need of Cole.” He lifted his eyes and looked beyond the gate. “Isn’t that right, Marco?”
Cole turned and looked outside the Church grounds, back toward the street. Marco and his young gang of Miracle Makers were strolling up toward the front gate. Cole had wondered during his conversation with Joanna: If her story was true, why would Father Picoult allow the two of them beyond the reach of the Church, alone? And now Cole saw that he hadn’t. They had been two lambs, guarded by a half dozen shepherds.
Marco came up to the gate and rested his hands on the wrought iron. “Congratulations,” he said to Joanna, a wry smirk on his face.
Cole tried to will himself to be two inches taller. He thought he could sense a tinge of jealousy in Marco’s demeanor.
Marco looked to Father Picoult. “Does he know?” He jerked his head at Cole.
