by C. G. Watson
I crush my bag against my chest, grip Haze’s face mask with both hands, fight back a wave of tears.
“Sit tight,” the driver hollers over all the racket. “Ride’s gonna be bumpy!”
I twist around, watch the smoldering helicopter wreck disappear over my shoulder as we speed off, hoping to catch a glimpse of Haze so I can yell at the driver to stop, to go back, to save him.
How could I have let this happen? The first rule of combat is: never leave a platoon member behind. Abandon no fellow soldier, ever.
I grip my chest against the memory.
Two truck doors.
One slamming right after the other.
And then she left.
21.5
Mason and I are on the same mission.
22
Before long, we roll up to the entrance of an adobe church. Mason barely waits for the driver to cut the engine before asking, “What is this place?”
“El Sanctuario.” His overexaggerated pronunciation makes me cringe.
As we pile out of the van, I fully expect further instructions from the driver, or maybe even for a nun to come out and escort us inside.
But no.
“What do we do now?” Mason asks the driver.
“Go inside,” he says. “And wait.”
“Wait for what?” she calls after him as he grinds the gears and sputters off down the road.
We spend a few seconds looking at the smooth mocha-brown facade of the church, at the adobe fence with its rickety wooden gate standing in an open invitation to enter, which we do. Just inside the courtyard, a rugged wooden cross is meant to let visitors know they are in a spiritual place.
Somewhere spiritual.
That’s what she wanted.
Learn to fly. Fly away. Somewhere spiritual.
The ache radiates from my organs and cells into the clay and dust and cactus of El Sanctuario.
Mason reaches for my hand, slides her fingers through mine, and I manage somehow to slip back into myself without rupturing.
She seems to have taken a vow of silence as we wander the grounds, through the crosses that occupy nearly every inch of vertical surface. Wrought iron, wood, bamboo—they hang on every fence, stand planted in adobe bases, some are even draped with rosary beads. I’ve never seen a map that was so littered with religious icons—this is most definitely not my version of the Boneyard.
Mason tugs my hand, and I follow her as she tiptoes into the chapel.
The only light inside comes from sun pouring in through the windows and from small burning candles along nearly every wall. Mason sits on one of the flat wooden pews but doesn’t motion me to join her, so I just keep moving through the high-ceilinged sanctuary. For some reason, I need to touch everything, to get the feel of this place on my fingers. The wooden shelves that hold up rows of votives. The hand-painted pictures of saints and angels. Wrought-iron candelabras. A statue of the Virgin Mary, tucked into a small arch carved into the wall. Shadow and light fall over the Virgin’s face, and I lean in, run my fingers along the curve of her royal-blue veil. Flashes of memory hit me quick and hard. Devin’s Virgin Mary skateboard. The I-Tech raiders decked out in the same shade of blue.
I pull my hand back, look closer at the carved face, at the hair painted the same soft brown as my mom’s. The eyes cast downward. The lips bent in eternal sadness, as if the woman in the statue always knew her heart would break someday.
I close my eyes, watch my mom getting into Stan’s truck that late afternoon, the way she leaned out the window for one last look at me as I stood there choked with paralyzing grief. I open my eyes again, stroke the statue, think how strange it is that the shadows fall across its face in exactly the same way.
In a flash, it’s hot inside the sanctuary—boiling hot, like in the subway catacombs. Sweat pools, then pours down my neck and back. I find an open doorway, slip outside for some cool air.
I end up in a courtyard somewhere in the center of the sanctuary. Get my bearings. Start walking. Follow the high adobe fence that surrounds the complex until I hit another, smaller courtyard. Here, a man-made rock structure houses some kind of built-in shrine with a tiled picture of the Virgin Mary resting against the back wall and a statuette of Jesus kneeling before her. Bouquets of fresh-cut flowers sit at her feet, and rows of rosary beads that I’m guessing people leave behind after saying a prayer hang from a rod across the top. The bottom is covered in candles, most of them lit.
I wonder how many of those rosary prayers were answered.
I wonder if that’s why my mom wanted to visit a place like this.
I follow the fence around to the back of the sanctuary, where I stumble across a weedy, overgrown cemetery. The markers are homemade stone-and-iron tributes, and every single grave is decorated with flowers—freshly cut, brightly colored flowers.
It’s strange, this place, confusing. The sanctuary is quiet and empty. The whitewashed walls remind me of the hotel where we met the Prophets, down to the dark outlines of accent wood throughout the chapel and the layers of dust coating the pews and pictures. But this place isn’t like the hotel, or the school, or any of the rest of the maps on UpRising. It’s not dead or abandoned; little signs of life exist everywhere I look. The lit candles. The fresh flowers. It’s almost like I’m not in the Boneyard anymore, like I’m playing a completely different game. Even though it confuses me, I like it here. I like the calm, the safety of it. I haven’t been anywhere this serene in at least1,580-some-odd days.
I find my way back inside, relieved that Mason’s still sitting in the pew. She might be praying or might not—I can’t tell. Doesn’t matter. Either way my mission in this moment is to let her be, to do whatever it is she wants to do here. Maybe she needed to come to a place like this. I’m not sure why I think that, just that it’s the first truth I’ve felt in a long time.
At the far end of the room I spot a table filled with mostly lit votives, and I wander over to it, wondering if it would be disrespectful to light a candle when I’m not even Catholic. They must have a sign posted, something that says what you’re supposed to do. But all I see is a Bible lying open on the table. It’s old, has that look like it’s printed on onionskin, on paper so thin you could tear it just by looking too hard. I hold my breath, lean in just barely. I don’t know much about the Bible, only that this one is open to Genesis, and that “genesis” means “beginning,” and I think how strange that is, too, since I only seem to be steered toward endings. Bad ones. But I read what’s on the page anyway.
It’s the story of Abraham.
It’s the story of how God wants Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.
God wants Abraham to sacrifice his son.
Devin.
The worthy will sacrifice the lamb.
Mason.
I freeze for a second, then sprint into the pews, only to find them empty.
The pew.
The chapel.
The whole fucking sanctuary.
Empty.
I spin around a few times. Maybe she went outside like I did, to get some fresh air. Maybe she went out to look for me. I stagger through the courtyard, along the fence, down by the cemetery, scan the entire space around me, every inch. Fear peels off me in sheets as I realize . . .
She’s gone.
Mason.
Is.
Gone.
23
I don’t even get two seconds to ponder the thought.
The entire building begins to rumble. I hit the deck, waiting for it to stop, but it doesn’t, so I lay panting on the floor, breathing in dirt and dust and microscopic particles of things that used to be whole, and then I see them: cockroach after cockroach heading straight at me across the floor. I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing to hell I knew what I did wrong this time. Every time. Everyone. Gone.
I have to get out of here.
I scramble to my feet, run into the chapel, but the shaking and rumbling just get louder, stronger. A cloud of dust blows in t
hrough the open doors. It takes a while for enough of it to clear away to reveal the outline of soldiers storming the sanctuary courtyard. I can’t tell if they’re commandos or NIM—the dust is still too thick to make out any details.
As they burst into the chapel, my eyes go straight to their gray-purple-black fatigues. I don’t know why, but their presence is not completely reassuring this time.
“What is this?” I call out. “Why are you back?”
“The area is compromised.”
No shit. “Where’s Mason?”
The commandos spread out, search the chapel and the courtyard, leaving two men in the room with me, weps at the ready.
“Where is she?” I yell.
The others return to the chapel, shake their bowl-cut heads in silent affirmation.
I’m the only one here.
“She can’t be gone. . . .” My words ricochet against the vaulted ceiling, then hurl back down to the dirt floor. “I saved her. Jesus, man, I got her here. How can she be gone?”
“Your signatures,” says the commando with the barrel leveled at my chest.
“My signatures?”
“Your movements,” he says, impatient.
The blood drains completely out of my body, spills into a crimson pool around my feet.
I did this?
My phone. My signals. My signature.
My fault.
“She’s gone?” I ask. No amount of blinking can outmaneuver the flow of tears hitting my eyes.
The commandos say nothing.
“Was it NIM?” I demand.
Silence.
“Where’d they take her?”
Silence.
“Why did you ask for my help after the bird die-off?”
Silence.
The absoluteness of nothing.
“I was supposed to help,” I say, fighting to keep the break out of my voice. “I was supposed to save it. I thought you wanted me to save it.”
“It was your signatures,” he says again.
They swarm in as my knees give out, grab me as I start to fall. As the room freeze-frames around me, they prevent me from total collapse onto the floor.
“I did this.” The words rip out of me, grinding, shrieking, metal on metal. “I made it happen. I couldn’t fix it.”
“It was your signatures.”
I try to pull away. “I know. You fucking told me that already!” I free one arm from the commando’s grip, reach into my pocket, pull out my phone.
I shove it at him.
The commando hesitates for a half beat, then grabs the phone and disembowels it before handing the empty shell to his fellow soldier.
“Now cuff him,” he says.
What?
“Cuff me? Why?”
The commando jerks my hands behind my back, wraps zip ties around my wrists, and pulls tight.
“Why are you doing this? Aren’t we on the same side?”
“You can’t help us,” he says. “And we can’t help you.”
No one can help you, Ravyn had said.
And just as they begin to drag me toward the awaiting Jeep, I catch the first glimpse of the patch on his arm, the almost minuscule embroidered letters:
NIM.
23.5
I ran after her at first, in complete shock.
In disbelief.
She was leaving. And I couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t scream.
Couldn’t stop her.
And then I just stood there, crap-excuse-of-a-loser-son that I am, and watched her go.
24
All I can do is kick and rant as they lift me by the arms and legs and carry me toward a waiting Jeep.
“Shut up,” one of the commandos snaps.
“Make me.”
He accepts the challenge.
My heavy head throbs like a bitch, but I keep shouting for Haze and Mason even after the commando’s thrown me into the back of his covered truck. If he wants me to shut up, he’ll have to muzzle me. Or shoot me.
I hear the engine start up and the gears grind, and I topple backward as the truck lurches forward.
I scream, but they don’t answer me. I bang my head against the thick plastic window, kick at the sides, slam my feet against the truck liner, knowing they could stop at any minute, come back here, beat the crap out of me, or worse.
But they don’t pull over, don’t stop. They don’t even turn around in their seats. It’s like they can’t hear me. Like I don’t exist.
You mustn’t question the mission.
Son of a bitch. Oldest trick in the book and I fell for it like an idiot supreme. Played right into their hands. Delivered the last two people in the world I could trust right to them on a silver fucking platter, the whole time thinking I could still be Worthy, that I could Ascend.
No one can save you.
I can’t accept that as reality. I can’t.
I lean against the truck wall, watch somewhere spiritual shrink into the distance.
My eyelids close. I feel the drift of the truck moving through time and space, and I wonder if this is what it feels like to die. Weightless, painless, floating on the jet stream of the universe. I’d do anything to stop the ache, the constant gaping, bleeding, infected wound that never heals, never closes over, just sits there, raw and oozing, every minute of every day.
I know I should stay awake, that it would be a tactical mistake to drift off. But I’m so tired, I’m not sure I can fight it.
I’m tired of having to fight.
• • •
My head kicks straight up off the corrugated metal truck bed as we hit a pothole or something. I’m not even fully awake yet before I come down again, hard enough to get serious cranial reverb.
Massive headache now added to the groggy, but it still isn’t enough to pull me out of this deep, narcoleptic-grade sleep I’m in. I drift off again.
• • •
I have no idea how long I’ve been in the back of this truck, only that at some point my eyelids fly open as I realize we’re not moving anymore. I lean up, get my bearings, notice that I’m covered in a wool army blanket, as if someone tucked me in somewhere along the way.
I worm my way to my knees, crawl to the back window, push my head through the plastic flap. We’re definitely stopped, but I have no idea where. It looks pretty woodsy, and the air smells like a Christmas tree in February, like a pine air freshener that’s almost but not quite used up. Patches of bright blue sky hang between huge thunderheads over the tree line, only for some reason I can see the Carew Tower sticking up between the tips of two soaring redwoods, and it’s tripping my shit because I feel like I’m as far from home as I’ve ever been.
“Hello?” I call out, my voice echoing flat and hollow back to me. “Anyone there?”
No answer.
I immediately start calculating how I can climb out of the back of this truck without needing to use my hands. I’d like to keep from falling out if possible, because (a) that would look ridiculous if anyone’s watching, and (b) if no one is watching, I’d probably end up cracking my head open on the asphalt and bleeding to death in the process, and I just lost the only person who could throw me a rez or even a heal.
I try standing, but the canopy is too low for me to get any higher than a hunch. That doesn’t stop me from attempting to swing one leg over the back anyway. But the bumper is also too low and I avert castration-by-tailgate by a few minuscule centimeters.
I drop back inside, not ready to give up yet. There has to be a way out of this.
My Trade Screen is completely blank by now, thanks to my endless string of failures. I scout the bed of the truck for anything sharp enough or at least sturdy enough to saw through a hard plastic zip tie. Other than the military-issue blankets, there isn’t so much as a used Spork back here.
Plan B: work my hands out of the cuff by bending and flexing, Houdini-style, until they slip through.
Plan B may take a while, though, partly because it’s not as
easy as they make it look on TV, and partly because my arms have fallen asleep—arms that don’t have a whole lot of muscle tone in them in the first place.
As I wriggle my fingers and wrists in various states of contortion, I keep my ears open for the sounds of voices or footsteps or even tires coming down the road. Amazing what you can be attuned to without an earful of Bunny Puke slamming into your head.
My hands are nerve-sweating so bad by now, the zip tie actually starts to give a little. I get it up around my left wrist, nearly fold my hand in half to yank it all the way out. My arm muscles burn like crazy, but then . . .
Freedom.
Or so I think.
I tip my head, cue in to the crunch of footsteps on gravel echoing somewhere nearby. They’re faint, but they’re there, and I close my eyes against the translucent memory of Stan, his boots, our walkway. I shake the memory out of my head, lift the back window flap, catch a quick look around. Wherever those footsteps are coming from, it isn’t behind the truck. I slip over the tailgate, proud as hell at how stealth I’m managing my escape as a prisoner of war.
But I’m not out of the weeds yet.
Can’t let myself get lost in the details.
I peek around the side of the truck: the driver’s side is clear too. I crouch as low as I can get and tiptoe around to the door. No time to wuss out. I press the button, ease the door open, crap myself with relief that no one’s inside, and close the door as soft as possible after climbing in. A quick glance out the front window reveals nothing but wilderness. Which means those footsteps didn’t come from in front of me either.
I bend down, check near the steering column, where, sure enough, the keys are in the ignition. I shake my head, stunned by this turn of good fortune. Maybe this is a reward drop from the expansion pack. Hell, I deserve something for staying in the game this long against all odds.
I’m fully aware that if there’s a platoon within the slightest radius of this truck, it’ll be instantaneously obvious, because as soon as I fire up the engine, they’ll all come running. But the only alternative is to not start the engine, and if I stay here—
