Scorched Earth

by Tommy Wallach

  They’d been lucky; the topmost platform was only about eight feet below them, and one of the four rods—which would eventually be used to extend the scaffold even higher—was only a foot or so from the edge of the truncated hallway. “All we have to do is grab hold of that pole and slide down to the platform,” Clive said, though as soon as the words were out of his mouth, it didn’t seem nearly as simple as all that. The whole scaffold seemed to be shivering in the lashing rain and wind, as if it were afraid. He looked to Flora. “I can carry you on my back, if you don’t think—” Before he could put out a hand to stop her, she slipped past him, leaping to the iron rod and sliding lithely down to land with a thump on the top level of the scaffold.

  “Can I ride on your back?” Paz said.

  “Will you be offended if I say no?”

  “Extremely. You better jump before I slap you.”

  Clive sat down on the ledge and wrapped his legs around the bar, thinking he might inchworm his way down the same way you’d climb up a rope. Instead, as soon as he’d transferred his weight to the rod, he found himself plummeting toward the platform. His feet caught on the edge for an instant but immediately slipped off again. He slid a few feet past the platform, stopping only when his elbows caught painfully on the wood. Flora reached out for him, but he wasn’t secure enough to risk grabbing her hand. He tried to use his legs to climb the pole, but the metal was too slippery.

  “Clive!” Paz shouted. “I’ll come help.”

  “Wait!” Clive gasped—but too late. Paz landed heavily on the platform, and the vibrations immediately knocked him loose.

  He dropped about ten feet, still clinging tightly to the pole, before he was abruptly stopped by a crossbeam. As he fell forward, into the skeletal interior of the scaffolding, he stretched out his arms toward where two iron bars met in an X and just managed to grab hold. He looked down, and saw Annunciation Square roiling like a storm-tossed sea; the Wesah had arrived and were throwing themselves at the much larger Protectorate force.

  The wind picked up, whipping the rain into his eyes. With a groan, Clive managed to heave his right leg over one of the crossbeams. Paz was calling out from somewhere above him, but he couldn’t spare the breath to answer. He tried to hoist his other leg up but underestimated his own strength; the momentum carried him over the top of the X and left him dangling from the underside, by his ankles this time, and staring straight down at the next level of the scaffold. It was at least fifteen feet away—too far to fall. He crunched his abdomen and tried to pull himself upright again, but the beams were too slick. Soon he realized there was no hope of climbing up again; it was down or nothing.

  He looked to the nearest of the vertical rods that supported the corners of the scaffold—if he could get to it, at least there’d be some hope of using friction to slow his descent. He began to swing back and forth—newly grateful for the Protectorate’s excruciating conditioning drills. Then, with a deep breath and a prayer, he unhooked his ankles, launching himself through the air. He got one hand on the rod and pulled himself to it as he began to fall, recrossing his ankles around the metal and squeezing as tightly as he could. It seemed an eternity before he finally crashed onto the wooden platform and was sent sprawling. He was still catching his breath when Flora and Paz descended the rope ladder that was the intended means of traversing the scaffold.

  “Not your most graceful moment,” Paz said.

  “Really? I thought I was pretty damn impressive.”

  A wisp of a smile pricked the corners of Flora’s mouth—maybe she was still in there after all.

  The descent went smoothly enough after that, though Clive was never quite able to shake the feeling that the entire scaffold was on the brink of blowing away like some great kite. They stopped at the second floor, where Clive used the sword he’d taken from his father’s office to slice open the canvas sheet separating the scaffold from the exposed interior of Notre Fille. Finally he found himself back on familiar territory: the church’s administrative offices. Papers were strewn everywhere, many of them blackened and torn from that first bombing. The bodies of those who’d been here that day had long since been removed, but bloodstains were still visible on the walls and ceiling.

  The three of them moved quickly through the halls and down the eastern stairwell to the ground floor, where they unlatched the door that had been locked when they’d arrived at Notre Fille scarcely an hour ago. Clive peeked his head around the jamb and was grateful to find the narthex empty; the Sophians must all have retreated upstairs. Still, they didn’t waste any time sprinting across the marble floor and into the nave.

  An impossible quiet descended as he closed the heavy doors behind Paz and Flora. The velvet curtains of the Dubium shifted slightly with the breath of air.

  “We should split up,” Paz said. “We can cover more ground that way.”

  “What are we looking for?” asked Clive.

  “Anything that hums or clicks or ticks. Anything suspicious, really.”

  “How long do you think it’s been since Chang gave us twenty minutes?”

  “Let’s not waste time thinking about that.”

  She ran toward the ambo. Clive looked beneath the pews one by one, while Flora walked around the edge of the room, glancing into the cabinets at the end of every row where the extra kneelers and Filia were kept. He was lying on his stomach checking the rearmost pew when his eye was drawn to a flicker of movement in the Dubium, in the quarter inch of space between the bottom of the curtain and the floor—someone was in there. He walked quickly to the unoccupied half of the box, pulling the curtain open and closing it behind him.

  “Who are you?” he whispered, hoping to avoid distracting Paz and Flora from the search.

  “Clive Hamill. Everywhere I turn, there you are.”

  The voice was a lightning bolt of memory: suddenly Clive found himself back in that strange little lean-to fifty miles out from Sophia, watching as his brother fitted the wax cylinder into the phonograph machine. Back when Gemma was still alive and Paz was still Irene and there was reason to believe war might not ever come.

  “Director Zeno,” Clive said. “What are you doing in here? Aren’t your soldiers upstairs?”

  “Yes. They still haven’t realized we’ve walked into a trap.”

  “You knew?”

  “Not until it was too late. I assume Chang has a rather large explosion planned. A part of me is curious to see it.”

  “We can still stop it. Chang told us the explosives were in here somewhere.”

  “It hardly matters. If the building doesn’t kill us, the soldiers outside will. Besides, isn’t there something poetic in us being literally crushed by the church?”

  “I’m a lot more interested in the science of it than the poetry, being honest.” Clive needed to get Zeno’s mind working on the problem at hand; luckily he had some experience soliciting help from a genius—you just had to pique their interest. “Can you really blow up a building this big with one explosion?”

  “Why not? Structures have their weak points, just like people.”

  “Such as?”

  “The carotid artery. The Achilles tendon.”

  “I mean in buildings. Like, how would you destroy Notre Fille, if you had to?”

  A long pause, longer than they could afford—but Clive knew from experience that there was no rushing people like Zeno. “Well, the nave runs the length of the building, so I’d probably start in here,” she finally said.

  “I already know that. Where in here?”

  “I’d need to see the plans to know for sure, but I’d target any structural walls, particularly ones that continue through to higher floors.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. “Okay. That’s what I’ll look for. Now go and gather as many of your people as you can and lead them outside. You’ve only got a few minutes before this thing blows.”

  “But Chang’s guns—”

  “Have already been abandoned. The Protecto
rate’s busy fending off the Wesah.”

  “The Wesah? They’re fighting the Protectorate?”

  “That’s right. So get moving.” But there was no sound from the other half of the Dubium. “Director Zeno? We’re kind of in a hurry here.”

  Zeno sighed. “In the last twenty-four hours, humanity has managed to erase centuries of progress, if not more. We’ll have to start all over again. I’m too old for that, Clive. Too tired.”

  “Starting over is what humanity does. We build things and then they get ruined and then we build them again. That’s life. That’s all there is.”

  Silence. “You’re so much like him. Your father, I mean. It’s a shame that… well…” A hitch in her voice, a cough. “Good luck, Clive.” He heard the curtain draw back; by the time he left the Dubium, the doors of the nave were already swinging shut. Neither Flora nor Paz appeared to have noticed any of it.

  No time to dwell. Zeno had mentioned “weak points”—but what would qualify? He glanced around and tried to work out how the architecture of this chamber related to that of the higher floors. He was pretty sure the rearmost wall, which separated the nave from the sacristy, also ran alongside the hallway upstairs.

  “What were you doing in that box for so long?” Paz said. She’d placed a chair up against the back wall so she could reach high enough to run her hand along the back of the big annulus behind the ambo.

  “Just looking around.” Clive tried to open the door to the sacristy, but it was locked. He grabbed a nearby candelabra and managed to get the base between the jamb and the doorknob; it only took a few seconds to pry the old door loose from its frame and reveal the humble chamber beyond.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  “Daughter’s love,” he whispered.

  The sacristy was completely empty but for the device sitting on a desk at the back of the room. It was about the size of a milk crate, with a small white clock face on the front, counting down the seconds to Armageddon. About a hundred cables emerged from the back of the device and disappeared into holes drilled into the stone wall just behind it, like exposed veins.

  Paz ran to look at the clock. “Three minutes left!”

  “What do we do?” Clive said.

  “I have no idea!” She ran her hands over the device until she located a crack in the smooth metal. A flap opened to reveal a mass of wires and tubes running from one end to the other. “Some of this is electrical, and some is chemical. When the timer runs out, the machine will trigger a reaction, which will light the fuses.”

  “So cut them.”

  “There are too many.”

  “So cut the tubes with the chemicals.”

  “That might just initiate the reaction immediately.”

  Tick, tick, tick.

  “Well, we have to try something!” Clive said.

  “Fine! The fuses, then!”

  Clive drew his sword while Paz produced a switchblade from a pocket of her jeans. They sidled in behind the device and began sawing through the cables. Clive glanced at Flora and tried to give her a comforting smile.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  They finished cutting through the first two fuses, which left at least a dozen more. The clock now said two minutes.

  “This is hopeless,” Clive said. “We need to run.”

  “You’re right,” Paz replied.

  But neither of them moved. After a moment, they both started in on the next fuse. Clive watched as Flora grabbed hold of one as well, trying her level best to tear it out of the wall. He would’ve told her to leave, but he knew she wouldn’t go. They were all in this together now, for better or worse.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  9. Clover

  WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU don’t know what you’re doing?” Kita said, once they were out of earshot of Athène and the rest of the Wesah.

  “I only mean I don’t know exactly how to do what I know I need to do,” Clover replied.

  “And what is it that you know you need to do?”

  “Get everyone’s attention at exactly the same time.”

  “And by ‘everyone,’ you mean the thousands of people who are about to start fighting to the death outside Notre Fille?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Assume it isn’t.”

  Kita harrumphed—channeling a little bit of Burns in the severity of her frown. It saddened Clover to think she’d never get to meet him. In spite of their many disagreements, Clover had come to think of Burns as family. And Daughter knew he could’ve used the grizzled old man’s counsel right about now. “Okay. Then you’d need to be really loud. Could we make some kind of giant megaphone?”

  “It would have to be the size of a house.”

  “What about fireworks? Everybody looks at fireworks. At least you’d get their attention.”

  “They wouldn’t go off in this storm. And most of the soldiers probably wouldn’t even see them. They’d have to be looking in just the right direction.”

  “Well, I don’t know how you expect anyone to see anything unless it shows up right in the middle of Annunciation Square, where those two big lights are pointing.”

  “The lights!” Clover kissed Kita on her sopping cheek. “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?”

  But Clover’s mind was already rushing forward, following the lines of implication, solving what problems he could predict. They’d have to be big, at least three or four feet wide—though it’d be safer to err on the small side, so the shape was right. Should they be paper? No: too flimsy, and the lights probably ran hot. Wood, then, but where to find it? “Your family’s workshop. How far would you say that is from here?”

  “Five minutes if we run, but why would we—”

  “So let’s run.”

  He made it half a dozen paces down the road before he was brought to attention by Kita’s piercing shout. “Clover Hamill, you will stop moving this instant!” His body obeyed before he had time to consciously consider the demand. “I need to know what the hell you’re planning.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “You told Athène. Why not me?”

  “I only told her because she refused to do what I asked her to otherwise.”

  “Which is what? I couldn’t understand with all of you talking in Wesah.”

  “I asked her to stop fighting in the middle of the battle, on my signal.”

  Kita looked appropriately appalled. “And she agreed to that?”

  “Yes. Now can we please stop talking and start running? We have a lot to do.”

  Kita sighed. “Fine. But if I die before I find out what your stupid plan is, I’m gonna be seriously pissed off.”

  “Duly noted.”

  * * *

  It felt like cowardice to flee Annunciation Square just as the battle was beginning. Clover kept glancing over his shoulder, as if something had to be chasing them, but there was only the steep slant of the rain, guttering candles in windows, the moonlight trying valiantly to penetrate the storm clouds. They reached the Delancey workshop without seeing another living soul. The large front doors were unlatched, slamming against the wall with every gust of wind. Rain had encroached deeply into the room, saturating a pile of finished planks in varying grains stacked up beside a workbench. Clover ran his fingers lightly over the topmost plank, collecting a layer of sawdust. In the wild, he’d have been able to differentiate the trees these came from with ease; but here they were literally shorn of context, just so much anonymous plant matter—and none of it useful. The long tables at which the Delancey wainwrights worked were still busy with wood scraps, iron filings, and chalk, but it was impossible to miss the huge chunk of quartz holding down a scrap of parchment. Kita read it aloud.

  “ ‘Left the city with what we could fit in a wagon. Headed for Corning.’ ” She let the paper float to the ground. “It’s Mama’s handwriting. Pa said he was gonna join up with the Protectorate when Sophia came. My brothers, too. They’re probably back ther
e in the square, fighting the Wesah.” Clearly she wanted comforting, but there wasn’t time; every second they wasted was another life lost—or two, or three. Clover appraised the worktables to see if they might serve his purpose. Most were well-made, built from just a few planks perfectly fitted and sanded into a single unit, but a couple were more rudimentary, constructed of a flimsy agglomeration of thin sheets of plywood: perfect.

  “Did your family leave their tools behind?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where do they usually keep them?” Kita was staring off blankly into space. “Kita! The faster we work, the sooner the fighting stops.”

  “The tools should be in there,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward a closet beneath the stairs at the back of the workshop.

  The door was too big for its frame, scraping loudly over the blackened arc already inscribed in the wooden floor. Inside, most of the shelves looked to have been recently cleared out, but a few old tools had failed to make the cut. Clover found two saws, both rusting where the blade met the handle, one missing half its teeth. He set them out on one of the plywood worktables and cast about for something he could use for an outline; for this to work, he couldn’t afford to draw the circles freehand.

  He found a small stool and set it on the table upside down: not quite big enough, but it would do for a baseline.

  “What are you doing?” Kita said, curiosity pulling her out of her daze.

  “You’ll see. Hand me that piece of chalk, would you?”

  He climbed onto the table and pushed one side of the saw handle up against the seat of the stool. With his other hand, he held the nub of blue chalk to the opposite side of the handle, creating a makeshift compass that he used to draw a circle about a foot wider in diameter than the stool itself. When that was finished, he repeated the whole process six inches to the left, ending up with two blue circles of the exact same size.