The 13 th tribe if-1

by Robert Liparulo

  He blew on the unfinished product and held it up into the glow of an amber porch light. Carved into the branch was the face of an old man-his scraggly beard flowed into the grains of bark; deep wrinkles etched his forehead, formed perfect crow’s feet, and arched from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. A bulbous nose perched over a grim mouth. Almond-shaped eyes awaited pupils.

  “It’s Gheronda!” Beth said, stepping onto the terrace from their apartment. “Shame on you.” She held out a wine glass. When he set down the knife and took it, she filled it from a green bottle.

  “A face like that,” Jagger said. “How could I not carve it? I’m flattered you recognized him.”

  “Michelangelo has nothing on you,” she said. She set the bottle on the wide, flat arm of the chair next to him and brushed wood shavings off the seat. “That boy needs to learn to clean up after himself.”

  “He was tired,” Jagger said. “I told him I’d take care of the mess. He’s getting pretty good too.”

  “He showed me. A man, I think.”

  “It’s going to be a Union soldier. He wants to make a whole regiment. Confederates too. Is he asleep?”

  “Soon as his head hit the pillow.” She dropped into the chair with a long sigh. “This place is an endless playground for a little boy.. and exhausting for his mother.” She filled her glass and took a sip.

  Together they scanned the monastery laid out before them, a box about the size of a football field. Moonlight cast a silvery radiance into the compound, which looked to Jagger like the Lego construction of an impatient six-year-old. None of the buildings was quite squared to the exterior walls; a few-such as the single biggest building, the basilica-canted diagonally away from the wall. Over a millennium and a half, structures had been built on top of others and squeezed into gaps. This left rooftops at varying heights, tunnel-like alleyways, and small irregularly shaped open areas. Many rooftops doubled as terraces and walkways, with stone flues popping up at odd locations like memorials to long-forgotten events.

  Defying this mishmash was the newest of the structures. Built against the interior of the south wall-to Jagger’s right-was the Southwest Range Building, which housed the library, icon gallery, a hospice, a chapel, and quarters for many of the monks. Its facade boasted a double series of arches, fanning out from a central monolithic tower with its own two-story arch and domed roof. Closest to Jabel Musa, the already-tall building was on high ground, giving Jagger the impression that it watched over the compound, a well-dressed parent calmly protecting its ragamuffin children.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Beth said.

  “The Southwest Range Building? Yeah.” The lunar glow caught its edges, accentuating the arches and giving it the appearance of having been carved out of the mountain rising behind it, like the temples of Petra a 150 miles to the northeast.

  The compound itself lay mostly in shadows. A small scattering of amber lights glowed slightly brighter than the moon, illuminating a terrace, a couple walkways, and the space between the basilica and mosque, which had been built in the tenth century to placate Egypt’s Arab rulers.

  “All of it.” She crossed her wine glass in front of her, inviting his eyes to behold the ancient setting. “So much history. Centuries of worship. Just think of the love for God that went into the placement of every stone.”

  “Lot of sweat,” Jagger said.

  She smiled. “Listen.”

  He did, though he already knew what he would hear: nothing. It was one of the eeriest aspects of the Sinai. No muffled radios or televisions, no barking dogs, no far-off hum of traffic. Even the occasional breeze seemed to pass without stirring a leaf or finding a scrap of litter to push over the ground. At this time of evening-just past ten-the monks had all retired to their quarters, taking with them the noises of human life: footsteps, closing doors, the clearing of throats. During the day it seemed one monk or another was always scraping a straw broom over the silt that settled everywhere.

  And with Tyler asleep-the only time he didn’t rattle or stomp or make gun sounds with his mouth-Jagger and Beth had come to treasure this hour. The world had shut down, seemingly just for them.

  Jagger felt pressure on his shin and leaned over to see a cat rubbing against him. He scratched its head, which it appreciated for about five seconds. Then it leaped away as if he’d pinched it. He slid back into the chair. The backsides of countless people who had sat there before him had polished the wood to a smooth gleam. The armrests were nicked and scarred by, as far as Jagger could tell, fingernails, knives, pens, and cigarettes. Even so, the chair felt like a throne to him, and he liked the idea of surveying a kingdom that wasn’t his, next to a queen who was. He lifted his wine glass. “To you,” he said, “for sticking with me.”

  She tapped her glass to his. “I never considered doing anything else.”

  “I know,” he said. He sipped the scarlet Egyptian wine. It was a cabernet sauvignon from Chateau Des Reves, the best they could find, which wasn’t saying much. When it came to wines, Egypt was no France. This blend, with grapes imported from Lebanon, exhibited the varietal characteristics of flowers and cherry cough syrup. “I just mean, you’ve put up with a lot, and we haven’t really talked about it that much.”

  She touched his arm. “I figured we would when you were ready.”

  He smiled at her, then stared into the glass. “I just…”

  “What?”

  “I never would have guessed I’d crumble like I did.”

  “Your grief ran as deep as your love.”

  He squinted at her. “You loved them too.”

  “We all grieve differently. I threw myself into my work.”

  “I couldn’t work,” Jagger said, feeling that old smoky, choking sense of self-loathing rising up from his gut. He shook his head. “I don’t know how you did it.”

  She squeezed his arm. “I laid a lot of pain at the foot of the cross. I just figured he could handle it better than I could.”

  “I blamed God,” Jagger said. He pushed his lips tight. The anger was still there. “A whole family, Beth.” As if she needed reminding. “Here one minute, gone the next. All because-” He turned away, didn’t want her to see the fury on his face. It was something he was supposed to have left behind in the States. He gazed at the simple, thin cross rising from the basilica’s peaked roof. “All because some idiot thought he could drive plastered out of his mind.”

  Beth half turned and tucked her legs beneath her on the chair. She leaned close to him, her fingers stroking his forehead and running back through his hair. “Shhh,” she said into his ear. Her hand slid over the side of his head and stopped on his neck, holding him while she brushed her nose against his cheek. “Let it go,” she whispered.

  He turned toward her. Her eyes looked into his, calming, understanding, sharing his burden.

  His lips paused before touching hers, and only their breath kissed. To them, it was more intimate than full contact. It had started with their first kiss. Unsure eighteen-year-olds, wanting it, but frightened of feelings they’d never before felt so strongly. Neither had moved to close the paper-thin gap between their lips. After what had seemed like an eternity of tasting each other’s essence but nothing more, she had giggled. Spell broken, he went in, pressing his lips to hers. During their most tender moments, this was how they kissed. Now their lips touched, barely, and she parted from him, returning to her throne.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “Right back in your face.” Another youthful praxis they’d held on to. He scanned the grounds. “It scares me,” he said, “how fast it comes rushing back. The anger, frustration…”

  “You did the right thing,” she said, “getting away, bringing us here.”

  “What else could I do? I fell apart.” He offered her a thin smile. “I couldn’t even drive, for crying out loud.”

  A hint of the concern that had defined her appearance in the bad old days touched her eyes. She parted her lips, then closed th
em. He knew she wanted to assure him that it wasn’t his fault, that he’d crumbled for good reason. But she knew him better than that: Regardless of the circumstances, he took responsibility for his own behavior. He never blamed outside causes, because it wasn’t what happened to you that made you the person you were, it was how you responded to those things.

  But he had blamed outside causes-God, the world-and he hadn’t handled himself very well.

  “A lot of people would have just kept sliding away,” Beth said. “You took steps to get better. That’s who you are, Jag. You fall-sometimes hard-but you always get up.”

  “I wasn’t sure I could this time. I’m still not sure.”

  “You’re up,” she said. “Maybe on wobbly legs, but you’re up. Don’t think you aren’t.”

  “Like I said-” He raised his glass. “To you.” He took a swig and stood up. He stumbled into the railing, and Beth reached for him.

  “Jag?”

  “It’s these wobbly legs,” he said, casting a sideways glance at her. He made his knees go out and in.

  She smiled and stood, pressing her side to his and wrapping her arm around him.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I got you.”

  [21]

  Nevaeh was in her favorite time and place: almost midnight in the corridor of skulls. She loved the way it was now, lighted only by candles. She imagined this was the way it looked when the skulls were originally stacked, before someone had added the electric lights.

  The candles were spaced twenty feet apart on the stone-wall side of the corridor. The limestone above each one bore the blackened smoke stains of thousands of previous flames. Their flickering made the skulls appear to move, as though they were snapping their attention back and forth, watching for visitors or chatting with one another.

  She strolled past the closed doors. Ben’s… her own… the kids’… heading toward the far end a hundred meters away. Screeeeech-click: feeling the texture of fleshless foreheads. She imagined the sights each set of now-gone eyes had witnessed, the torrent of memories each brain had stored and the emotions they sparked. A mother’s kiss. A father’s wink of approval. A spouse’s embrace. Childbirth. Love. Loss. Grief. At the time important, monumental-now gone, smoothed into insignificance by death.

  She stopped at a skull that appeared more agitated than the rest, jerking around in the light of a sputtering flame. She slipped her finger into the skull’s eye socket and traced its rough edge.

  “Who were you?” she whispered to it. “Did I know you? Did we laugh together? Fight?” She leaned over to glare into the sockets. “What sights do you see now? Angels and gold… demons and fire… eternal nothingness? Are you basking in heaven or burning in hell?” She hooked her finger around the ridge of bone between the sockets and pulled. It cracked. She withdrew her finger and pushed the bulging septum back into place. It gave off a chalky, dusty odor, like everything else down here, dust and earth.

  A sound reached her-the scuff of a shoe on stone-and she spun toward it. The corridor appeared empty, then a shadow shifted in the gloom between the light of two candles. It was too far away for her to make out the shape, if indeed it was anything more than a trick of the flames. She reached behind her and touched the butt of the ever-present pistol nestled into her waistband at the small of her back. She stepped forward. The shadow moved, solidified into a human silhouette.

  “Who-?” she said, then it moved away from her, into the radiance of a candle. “Creed?”

  His eyes were wide, frightened.

  “What are you doing?”

  He ran, flashing through the cones of light toward the end of the corridor. A duffel bag bounced against his side.

  Nevaeh bolted after him. “Creed! Stop!”

  As she approached Sebastian’s room, she saw a dim light glowing inside. She glanced in as she passed: a desk lamp was on, and Sebastian lay sprawled on the floor. Picking up speed, she pulled out the gun. She had no hope of killing Creed with it, but they’d learned a long time ago that they were indeed human: Their muscles tore, their blood flowed, their organs failed-for a while. And they could hurt. Over time, each of them had felt more physical pain from lacerations, gunshots, and broken bones than entire armies combined. But only by severing the head from the body could they end their immortality; God had at least spared the world the horror of animated headless bodies and bodiless heads. Sometimes Nevaeh found that infinitely comical, at other times eternally sad.

  But shooting Creed would stop him long enough to deal with him-either locking him up until he came to his senses or eliminating him altogether. That was something they’d have to vote on as a tribe.

  She fired, intentionally wide-a warning shot. A skull shattered behind Creed. Bits of it pinged off the opposite wall. Other skulls tumbled to the floor.

  Creed zagged left, then right, continuing toward the dark end, almost there.

  Nevaeh stopped and braced herself, steadying the gun in two hands. Creed darted through the last of the light, and she fired twice. He sailed into the shadows, throwing back a guttural scream. She heard him tumble. She shot into the darkness, low, where she thought he’d fallen. The bullets sparked on the stone floor.

  Staying close to the wall, she walked quickly, ready to shoot again. She imagined him lying there, bleeding, but capable of lifting his own firearm, waiting for the chance to put a couple slugs into her.

  Doors crashed opened behind her.

  “What is it?” Ben yelled.

  “Shots,” Phin said.

  Other voices joined in-Elias’s, the children’s.

  “Stay back!” Nevaeh yelled. She stopped in the semi-gloom between two candles and squatted, squinting toward the blackness, expecting starbursts from Creed’s weapon. She yelled, “It’s Creed! He’s running

  … did something to Sebastian.”

  Footsteps pounded behind her. Without looking, she knew it was Elias and Phin; neither knew the meaning of caution.

  She fired at nothing she could see, hoping to hit Creed again or at least draw his fire, giving her a target. Elias and Phin tromped to a stop beside her. They raised handguns and began blasting away at the darkness. The noise was deafening, a long series of explosions like grenades igniting each other. Shell casings tinked over the floor, ejected from Phin’s semiauto. Nevaeh held her pistol, ready to shoot at Creed’s return fire, but it never came.

  The gunshots echoed against the stone after the men had exhausted their ammo. Through billows of swirling, eye-stinging smoke she saw them lower their arms. Elias eyed her and said, “What’d he do?”

  Nevaeh stood and gazed back toward the rooms. Ben was just entering Sebastian’s room. She said, “I don’t know.”

  Elias nodded and moved forward. Nevaeh grabbed his arm and stepped in front of him. She inched ahead, gun raised. When they reached the last of the light, where she’d pegged Creed, she broke a candle from its wax moorings. It pushed the darkness away, revealing blood glistening on the floor. A wide smear ended in a single handprint. A few feet farther, a thick ribbon of it snaked away. They reached the end of the corridor, where it joined another passage, running left and right. The blood continued down the left passage, as she knew it would: it led to the nearest exit. She held the candle to the wall. Creed had left a bloody handprint.

  “Where’d you get him?” Phin said.

  Nevaeh shook her head. She squatted again and held out the candle. The blood trailed into the darkness, drizzled near the right-hand wall, as though Creed needed its support. She thought of the many hunting expeditions she’d been on, how animals rarely fell where they’d been shot. More often, they ran-sometimes for miles-until finally succumbing to the blood loss.

  A flashlight beamed past her, illuminating the passage’s limestone walls far past the candle’s reach: more blood, but no Creed. Jordan stepped beside her with the light. He also held a revolver, big in his small hand.

  Five shots, she thought. I fired five times. Her small Beretta held nine, le
aving enough to bring him down-if she caught up with him. She took the. 357 from Jordan and handed it to Elias. Then she grabbed the flashlight and pushed Jordan back. “Go back to your room,” she said. Then the three adults went after Creed.

  [22]

  Nevaeh, Elias, and Phin returned fifteen minutes later. They found the others in Sebastian’s room. Jordan and Alexa sat on the cot, with Sebastian lying between them. A wet cloth was draped over his forehead.

  Alexa spotted them first and said, “He won’t wake up.”

  “Creed conked him good,” Toby said, pushing off the wall. “Did you get him?”

  Nevaeh shook her head, and Phin said, “He couldn’t have gotten far.”

  “Far enough,” Nevaeh said. They had followed Creed’s blood trail until it tapered to nothing. Either he’d found something to staunch it, or the wound wasn’t as bad as Nevaeh had thought and it had stopped bleeding on its own.

  “What I want to know,” came Ben’s voice, “is why you shot at him.”

  For a moment Nevaeh thought he’d slipped into an invisibility suit, but then the fighting chair rotated and there he sat, glaring at her.

  “None of us is a prisoner. We are all free to come and go. That’s the way it’s always been.”

  “Not when he’s talking about stopping us,” Nevaeh said. “Not when he knows our plans. Anyway, I didn’t shoot until I saw Sebastian on the floor. Stop grilling me.” She glanced around at the Tribe-the eight of them remaining, she thought achingly. Their faces reflected both sadness and anger-at Creed, not her, she hoped.

  Ben stood and leaned against the edge of the shark-fishing workbench, turning a reel in his hand, pretending to examine it. He said, “It would be nice to know that you aren’t going to shoot me someday when I step out for air.”

  “Don’t knock anybody out on your way, and I won’t.”

  Ben headed toward the cot, passing Sebastian’s computer-laden workbench. Nevaeh’s heart skipped a beat at what she saw there. She strode to the bench and picked up the black soda can with the glass dome. The dome was shattered, and the chip it had displayed was gone. She waved it at Ben, scattering bits of glass across the floor.