Chapter 57
One week later.
“The jury finds the defendant guilty,” Steven read from the piece of paper that had been handed to him. “Per the new legislation which prohibits capital punishment in any form, we sentence the defendant to banishment from our town as well as the surrounding hundred mile radius.” His voice echoed throughout the half-filled courtroom.
He locked eyes with his sister across the room. Whatever emotions she was feeling at the moment were hidden by that cloak of icy reserve she wrapped herself in when it served her purpose. They weren’t in the room used for the town hall meetings, but rather one newly designated for trials and sentencing. He felt it important to keep the two rooms separate. One signified progress and hope, while the other dealt with crime and punishment.
He shifted his focus to Natalie, who sat in the defendant’s chair. He saw fear in those lovely gray eyes. The shapely lips trembled.
“This is a mockery of justice,” she said, her voice husky and strained. “You’re convicting me on the basis of a telepathic message? Do you hear how ridiculous you people sound? Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that Steven’s son is the one who is making these allegations against me? Can’t you see what’s going on? He wants me out, and you people are too stupid to know you’re being manipulated.” She was yelling now, gaining courage from her defiance.
“There was more evidence that you murdered Marilyn besides Jeff’s testimony, and you know it, Natalie. We’re not going to go over it again. You’ve been found guilty by a jury of your peers. Your punishment begins immediately. You’ll be escorted back to your house so you can pack, then you’ll be taken a hundred miles out. You can pick which direction. We’ll give you enough food and water to last a month.”
“You can all go to hell,” she spat, then stood and walked past the jury box. Only half of the twelve chairs were filled, also per the recently passed legislation. Maybe a few years from now they would increase that number, but for now six jurors were all they had deemed necessary for a trial. There was too much work to be done to take any more people away from their jobs.
“Come on, Brittany,” she said to her crying daughter who had watched the legal proceedings from the gallery. “Let’s go.”
The young girl sniffed, dabbing a handkerchief at her pretty face.
“I’m not leaving,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I’m staying here. I want to stay here.” She shot a sideways glance at Jeffrey.
Jeffrey’s face could have been carved in stone, but the flushing cheeks gave away his discomfort. It had been his testimony that was largely responsible for the conviction of his girlfriend’s mother. When Natalie had touched his arm in the hospital at the bedside of the unconscious Marilyn, Jeffrey saw the murder in his mind’s eye. Saw the tea that Natalie gave to the librarian. Received the knowledge from Natalie herself, telepathically, that it was poisoned. After the chaos of the battle, he told his father everything. A search of Natalie’s house uncovered the wolfsbane. The rest had been left up to the jury.
“Don’t you want me to be safe?”
“I want you to come with me!” Natalie shouted, grabbing the slender arm of the fifteen-year old girl.
“That’s enough, Natalie. Brittany is old enough to decide what she wants to do. Leave her be. Sam, please escort Natalie to her house.”
“She’s my daughter!”
“Yes, but she’s not your property. Sam, please.”
The golden head nodded, but the handsome face was a picture of dismay; Steven felt on the inside as wretched as Sam showed on the outside.
Nobody wanted this, but the law was the law. He and everyone else would abide by their new laws no matter how unpleasant. Dani’s, Julia’s, and Amelia’s trials had gone differently. They had been found guilty of murder, but the acts themselves had been deemed justifiable. It was to be a new legal distinction in these extraordinary times.
All the jurors had to do was look at Dani’s face to decide Isaiah’s murder had been justified. The jury deliberation had only taken five minutes.
Logan was a sociopath; there had been no question. After his drawings were presented as evidence – the murder of Thoozy along with all the rest – the jury had commended Julia for her bravery in eliminating him. She had dismissed the praise with obvious disdain.
Cate had been something more difficult to identify. After Amelia had killed her and explained why she had done so, evidence had been found in the woman’s basement to corroborate Amelia’s claim that she had been poisoning Maddie. If Amelia’s reputation hadn’t preceded the event, the sentencing might not have gone the way it did.
It was a moot point. Amelia had chosen to leave town after her trial. The last anyone knew, she had been heading east.
The members of Isaiah’s army that had surrendered had been allowed to stay, including Dolores. The vote had been put to the entire town, and it had been close. Steven had voted to banish them with the rest of the prisoners, but in hindsight, he was glad they were here now. People were a commodity these days, and there were skill sets among the newest citizens that would benefit everyone. Two of the newcomers would be helpful in getting the power back on. Also among their number was a Yale-educated psychiatrist to help Julia, which would be more necessary than ever as unprecedented mental and emotional pathologies – both good and bad – were coming to light.
It was a new world. New polices, new rules, new laws must be tailored to fit it. When considering the talents, abilities, limitations, and proclivities of those who had survived Chicxsulub, the old ways would never work. Steven knew that; perhaps better than anyone except his sister. And with her help, they would steer their tiny pocket of civilization through the uncharted waters of this altered reality.
A reality where people could process information with the speed of a super computer, share thoughts telepathically, and heal themselves of mortal wounds.
Steven found the prospect both terrifying and thrilling.
Chapter 58
Three months later.
“You’re kind of scaring me,” Sam whispered into the ear he was currently nuzzling.
Dani smiled in the dark. “Good. You should be scared. I’m a scary bitch now.”
“No, you’ve always been scary. Long before this happened.”
He touched her face, feeling the contours of the cheekbones and the curve of the lips with appreciative fingertips. She could sense him smiling too.
She felt more at ease at night; less conspicuous when her face was in shadows. Sam swore he loved her still, despite the scars.
And she chose to believe him.
The first time she had gotten a good look at herself in a mirror, it took her breath away. But even though she didn’t have the super-healing ability that Sam seemed to possess, Isaiah’s reckoning was fading and would continue to do so with time. She kind of dug the menacing vibe she could project more effectively now; the scars gave her an edge when she needed to intimidate someone.
So there was that.
“I mean that you used to be a thrill-looker, and now you’re not. At least not so much. Don’t get me wrong...I like that you’re not that way anymore. But because it’s new and different, it’s a little scary to me. And it makes me wonder about something.”
“What’s that?”
“It makes me wonder if now that you’re settling down a little, maybe we could think about having some, uh, kids.”
She heard the nervous note in his voice, and she could feel him holding his breath.
After a long minute, she said, “You want to have a pack of ankle biters? Do you realize how much work those little fuckers are?”
They knew each other so well. She hadn’t flat-out put the kibosh on the idea of having children. She felt his smile in the dark.
Then she let him feel hers with his fingertips.
###
“Pablo, put her down before she throws up all over you.”
He grinned at the indulgent look on Maddie�
��s face as he held their baby aloft with outstretched arms.
“Emily says she wants to be a pilot when she grows up.” He made vrooming sounds as he twirled their daughter carefully in the air.
“She’ll be disappointed then. I’m pretty sure planes will be grounded for at least a generation.”
“True. Better rethink that career choice, young lady,” he said to the baby who was gurgling with delight, breast milk dribbling from the corners of the cherub lips.
Maddie sighed happily. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
The effects of Cate’s poison seemed to be out of her system. The only reminder was an occasional migraine, but she’d had those before; before Cate, and before a bullet had found its way into her head. They had always been a part of her life. Pablo often wondered if they weren’t a side-effect of her remarkable mathematical talent. She still received visions sometimes too. Nothing terrible at this point, but it distressed him to hear her moan in her sleep, knowing it might be something worse than just a bad dream.
“She’s perfect,” he replied. “Every inch of her.”
“Let’s hope she gets the best of both of us.”
“You mean my brilliant wordplay and your gift with numbers? Good grief, she could take over the world!”
“Let’s hope she gets my humility then,” Maddie said with a kiss to Pablo’s cheek.
“She is Subliminia...the Angel of Perfection,” Pablo cooed.
Maddie laughed, then was suddenly serious. “She is Serendipity...the Angel of Everything That Fell into Place and Defied the Odds. She’s a miracle, this one. And she has your beautiful golden eyes instead of my boring blue ones. Those eyes that must have come from a gringo in the woodpile.”
He smiled, then placed their baby back at her mother’s breast. The greedy lips quickly found the nipple they sought.
He looked at his Maddie holding their child. Both alive. Both healthy. Both perfect. The larger chest and the tiny chest rose and fell in unison.
Rose and fell.
Pablo thought he would never be able to close his eyes and sleep when that beautiful sight was before him.
###
Minutes later, Maddie smiled at Pablo’s snores. She sat up in bed, cradling the milk-drunk baby in her arms, then crossed the few feet of carpet to the bassinet. She laid the warm bundle in a mound of blankets, her fingers brushing the colorful, freshly-washed serape that had belonged to Pablo’s mother. It was important to him to have it near his child; a kind of proxy for his parents. He had plans to teach his daughter Spanish in their honor, and to share with her the same bedtime stories they had told him as a child.
Maddie’s fingertips burrowed deeper into the woven cotton stripes, drawn into the fibers now, as if compelled by some invisible force. She didn’t realize it, but her eyelids were half-closed, and her face had taken on the dreamy expression Pablo dreaded.
A man stood in the open front door of an old, ramshackle house. The scrape of his boots drew the woman’s attention from the clean laundry on the sofa she had been folding. A hot, dry breeze wafted through an open window, lifting the yellowed shade with an invisible ghost hand, revealing a mountainous desert landscape beyond. Alarmed, she darted toward the back of the house, but he was too quick. The next instant her back was pinned to the braided rug by the man who straddled her now. Blue-black hair fanned out around her beautiful, heart-shaped face. The delicate chin trembled.
The man wore a lecherous smile; his golden eyes never left the pretty face as he pulled up her dress and thrust himself inside her. When it was done and he was gone, she remained on the floor. Gear and shame kept her from running down the street to the federales building. Instead, she reached up to the sofa, grabbed the colorful blanket folded neatly there, and pulled it over her body and face. She stayed there for hours, heaving herself up just before her husband was due home.
Maddie removed her fingers from the bassinet where they had been entangled in the serape. The blanket had belonged to Pablo’s mother, who, according to Pablo, had been the most perfect woman in the world. Maddie felt a wave of sadness; not only because her daughter would never get to meet her grandmother, but also because Maddie would not be able tell anyone the reason why both Pablo and his child had such unusual golden eyes.
It didn’t matter. It was ancient history and no good would come from Pablo knowing his beloved Papa was not his biological father.
Maddie watched her baby sleeping, the tiny miracle who had squirmed into their ravaged world and who healthily remained there, having been gifted a double set of the genetic code that allowed her to do so. Maddie knew this child would be more special than any of them. She knew this not because she was a proud mother, but because her scythen told her as much. Finally, the word for all those images she saw in her head had a name. It had come to her recently. And somehow, the word felt perfect.
Epilogue
.
Dr. Harold Clarke crouched on the foyer floor of the BISI section of the British Academy in London. After all this time being alone, all the months of solitude and the increasingly erratic conversations with himself, another human...a reasonable-sounding human...was on the other side of the massive mahogany door. A mere four inches of wood separated them. Harold didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified.
“Sir, I mean you no harm. I have food! Please, just let me in.”
The voice was male, and there was a compelling tone to it; a subharmonic that resonated...spoke to him on a level that couldn’t be heard, but rather felt, like the vibrating notes of a bass violin.
His mind did a quick calculation, while his eyes absently scanned the walls of the foyer of the British Academy. The building had begun to feel less like a knowledge-filled sanctuary and more like a prison.
With shaking hands, he unbolted the three sturdy locks, then opened the massive door a crack to peer at the man on the stoop. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s you, then?” Harold said.
A wide grin revealed perfect teeth in the dark-skinned face.
“Yes, it’s me.” The brown eyes were kind. Loving, almost. Harold felt an instant kinship with the man; an immediate bond like he had never experienced with anyone before.
Harold said, “It took me a while to decipher your journal. Then longer still to establish the...connection. I’m sorry. I don’t know what you people call it.”
“It’s called scythen.”
“Ah, yes. That feels right. Come in, come in. I have many questions.”
“I’m sure you do, but they’ll have to wait. We must be on our way.”
Harold frowned. “Where are we going?”
The man’s smile turned mysterious. He reached for Harold’s hand, and said simply, “We’re going home.”
###
“Oh, you sexy vixen. Come to papa!”
Amelia laughed at the expression of pure lust on the face of her beloved Fergus. After weeks of travel – some on foot, some on bicycle, some in an abandoned Ford Focus she had found on the road with a full tank of miraculously good gasoline (yes, she could drive an automobile, but hated every moment) – she had arrived at the specific dot on the map where the Atlantic Ocean met the sandy beach known as Jupiter, Florida.
It was the place her scythen told her she would find Fergus. Tung had helped with that. Even though he was below with Jessie, his scythen was needed to help boost the signal.
“How many more times do you intend to bed me, you lascivious creature? I’m getting a little sore in the nether regions, and this sand is making it worse.”
They lay on a blanket on the beach, watching the scuttling clouds dance above the turquoise water. The sun at their backs painted the sky in swaths of lavender and tangerine. The warm, salty breeze felt delicious on her skin after the long months in the cold Midwest; felt like being fondled by a benevolent, lustful god.
“As many beddings as you’ll allow me. We have lost time to make up for.”
At the mention of time, her
smile faded.
When he noticed, he quickly added, “Let’s not think about it right now. We’ll think about it tomorrow.”
“You sound like Scarlett O’Hara,” she replied. She knew how he loved those silly movies. She had never seen the appeal. Life itself held plenty of fascination for her without capturing it on film and projecting it onto a screen or broadcasting it from an electronic box.
“We can’t keep putting it off,” she said.
He sighed.
She continued, “Before you say anything, I don’t want to see sympathy. I don’t want to hear chastisements. I don’t want to feel disappointment. I knew the price I would pay for my choices. Is it possible that we could just leave it at that?”
He kissed her lips.
“Not bloody likely. Amelia, my love,” he said, suddenly serious, “how can I lose you? How can I just pack up and go home, knowing that you’re going to get old and die in the blink of an eye?”
It was rare to see such solemnity on the face of the man with the bright blue eyes and the flaming red hair. The somber tone was at odds with everything about him, from the vivid colors of his physical body to the larger-than-life personality. It didn’t suit him.
“I don’t know. But you’ll do it and you’ll survive it somehow, and probably do so in the arms of the first female you meet on the road home.”
They both laughed, breaking the tension.
That lightness of being was how she wanted to spend her last days or months (maybe even a year, if she were lucky) with the love of her life, before she shooed him away and back to his virtual immortality. Because of her transmissions, which had revealed all the goodness she had witnessed during and after the battle at Liberty...the worthiness of the survivors, and the sacrifices they had made for each other...the Cthor had decided to delay an earth cleansing, pending further research and observation.
Beauty and Dread Page 34
