The Saints of David (The Jonah Trilogy Book 3)

by Anthony Caplan

  “What are you thinking, Arthur?” asked Carolina. She recognized a disturbance, something that had been categorized and identified. Now he was ready to move his body in alignment with this new idea. Arthur stood and stretched. He had been sitting for hours and felt stiff and light-headed from lack of sleep and food and their terminal dislocation. He approached the officer. Her soldiers lifted their heads and stared at the slouching youth. They had little knowledge of him. He was not one of the boat people, not one of the leaders with whom they were used to dealing, who could cajole and manipulate the mass into action at the appropriate time. He and the girl seemed oddly out of place, like tourists or missionaries that had wandered onto the wrong historical stage.

  “What are we waiting for?” asked Arthur. He held out his hands with palms uplifted. It was an oddly dramatic gesture that reinforced the soldiers’ perception that there was something intriguing and out of place about Arthur. In fact, he was shaking with a barely contained rage that made his teeth chatter and his words come out stuttered and flat, drained by his inner turbulence of their emotional content.

  “Water. We’ve been told the trucks are on their way,” said the officer.

  “Water. It’s right underneath us. Why don’t we dig? Just give me some of the men and some shovels,” said Arthur.

  “It’s temporary. We don’t want to leave a footprint. This is border land, belonging to the Yavapais.”

  “Useless. You want to keep us useless,” said Arthur. “Look around you. You’re going to have a mother of a dangerous situation on your hands. Instead of sitting around, give us shovels. Put us to work.”

  The officer looked around at the soldiers. They were waiting for word from her to take action, to quell the upstart whose words and gestures were so utterly lacking in grace or sense. This was a temporary encampment. The refugees had been located starving and near death on the road up from the swamps of the gulf. They would be escorting them on their way down valley as soon as the bureaucrats in David’s interior service worked out the logistics. In the meantime they were supposed to keep a low profile and avoid triggering the Repho’s drones or the tank cavalry of the Mexican forces that were on patrol in nearby Anzoate.

  “Go and sit down like the rest. Relax. We’re not taking suggestions from the crowd today.”

  The officer turned away and looked at her transponder, checking for communication from her headquarters -- the offices of the military’s unified command in the bowels of the tower, glittering like a needle in the distance. Arthur was tensely staring, seething with the need to save face, to punish for the words of mortal injury. Carolina was at his side in an instant, assessing his vulnerability. She pulled him around to face her.

  “Let’s go. We’ll look for it ourselves,” she suggested.

  “Goddamn. I’ll be damned before…”

  “Arthur, don’t get angry. Look at me.”

  “We can find water. These people are dying.”

  “We’ll look for it,” she repeated.

  Arthur turned to face Carolina. Underneath the calm of her eyes there was a light of panic like a train approaching down a far tunnel. For the first time, that wall of her resignation and stoic acceptance had been breached. Arthur was sorry. He looked past her and studied the faces of the young men, scattered like an unmixed mass of some stiffer element in the sea of plain humanity. The crowd spilled out from the canopy of the tent onto the rocks and under the mesquite brush of the surrounding desert. He realized it lacked purpose, an animating will to set it in the right direction. The young men would be slow in coming around if he called them out now, unified more by an appetite for the meagerest sort of advantage, only the barest sense of an eternal injustice, lined up opposite the Brigada guards. They knew he was angry but would stay clear of it, not trusting him; they would be thinking the contagion of it was a danger. But Arthur cherished his anger, knew it as a righteous flame that could lead to results, even though he also realized, deep down, that an eruption would get the better of him if he wasn’t careful.

  Carolina followed him out past the rocks along a trail that led in one direction back to the main road, a series of switchbacks they had climbed last week. There had been casualties, several children and an old man. They had all slipped away quietly at night. Arthur had seen the water when they’d dug the graves, he and two other young island men, Jony and Deivi. He knew they could find it if given a chance. They’d sacrificed lives, and now the mountain would give up its treasure. To Arthur it was clear. Maybe to the old lady on the rock it was also. But not to the longhaired bitch back there with the rifle slung loosely on her back. One swipe of the razor blade in his shoelaces would cut it off her and the next would wipe away her look of pride and superiority.

  They took the other direction out to the colina, an overlook. If you climbed on the rock you could get a good view of the valley and the city of David in its entirety -- the sprawl of recent conurbation around the spire of the tower, a crooked finger pointed accusingly at the sky.

  “I can’t get up there,” said Carolina.

  “You can,” said Arthur, encouraging her to go past her limits.

  “Put your right hand a little higher. There. Now step up.”

  With a little guidance and a final hand reaching and pulling her over the edge, Carolina joined him on the rock.

  “There it is. That’s the tower. David's golden city.”

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “It’s nothing to you.” He admired her nonchalance.

  Arthur wondered whether it would live up to its reputation as a place where the poor would prosper, a city run by a saint, or was it an illusionist’s trick, one of the bloodiest lies ever told? The poor were like a muddy, bottomless pit; the deeper you dug, the more there were. David’s city must be the same as anywhere, he thought. Still, it was worth following the dream, if only for the chance of wreaking havoc on the inevitable hypocrites and liars that lined the way. There must be wolves, he thought, people like him and the young men in the camp, out for blood, living in the shadows, not showing themselves for fear of the light. Whatever it was, it was a draw, a place that pulled humanity together for better or worse, a new city arisen by the old play reasserting itself in a new vessel. He imagined the city as a life form, breathing and singing in strange patterns, unheard at a distance. Listening closely, he heard the high-pitched, insect-like whirr of drone blades approaching. Up on the rock, he and Carolina were mercilessly exposed. She looked at him, watching his face for a sign.

  “Jump.”

  “No puedo.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  He took her hand. The drone appeared from around the corner of the colina, looming overhead, taking bearings and sightings and waiting for intelligence processing, the kill order from the servers located somewhere in the enemy sky. They had about a second. The patch of ground of the trail between the boulders was a little over ten feet below. Arthur pushed Carolina over the edge and followed behind, leaping for a spot beyond her. The drone fired. The colina exploded, sending shards of broken rock flying behind them as they plummeted towards the sloping ground.

  Arthur rolled on his hands and shoulders on the boulder-strewn trail. He popped to his knees and reached for Carolina. She lay there on her side. They were alive.

  The drone repositioned itself and took new sightings. He sensed that they were hidden from its sensors.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “Can you stand?”

  “I think I broke something.”

  “Fuck that. We need to get back. Come on.”

  “No puedo.”

  “Si puedo, bitch. Come on.”

  “Arthur, no puedo. My foot’s broken.”

  He needed her to move. There was no time for gentility. He hauled her to her feet and they climbed and limped along the trail back up the mountain to the top of the colina. Arthur pulled and cajoled exasperatedly. She didn’t seem to care about the drone still patrolling, b
ound to return overhead, looking for stragglers from the refugee camp to attack.

  “Ay. Don’t pull like that,” she said, genuinely pained.

  “I’m sorry, but you need to walk faster.”

  “Can’t you see I’m hurt?”

  “Then let me carry you.”

  “No. I can do it.”

  “Why are you so goddamned stubborn?”

  “Why are you always so selfish? All you think about is yourself.”

  “I’m trying to get us both back alive to the camp. We almost got killed back there.”

  “What’s the hurry? If the drone’s attacking us, it’s attacking the camp by now, too.”

  “That’s why we need to get back.”

  “Why? What do you expect to find? Nothing changes.”

  Arthur couldn’t answer her. He was just disgusted at her, at everybody that stood in his way. But he didn’t know the answer. He must have felt some sort of need to protect, some vestigial, hard-wired fool's errand. Maybe he and Carolina would be better off trying to get to the city on their own. That thought was quickly vanquished by the image of all the faces that had shared their lives, food, stories and hopes. They couldn’t just abandon those people. Instead of words, he stepped ahead on the trail, and Carolina followed behind silently, head down, shamed by her own instinct of self-preservation.

  The camp was silent, stunned into total stillness. Learned helplessness and befuddlement seemed to have entirely taken over refugees and Brigada fighters alike. The drone had been sighted, and its fire had been heard over the edge of the colina. The old lady in the strange, multicolored head scarf had retreated back under the tent as had most of the other free spirits, as if the tarp would afford some sort of psychic protection from evil spirits in the sky.

  Arthur sat on the rock, refusing to go back under. The officer came out to see him. As she approached, Carolina looked at Arthur with an expression of befuddlement as if asking. “Now what are you going to say to defend yourself? What other foolishness are you capable of?”

  Arthur was tired of subtleties he was incapable of taking seriously. It was time for action. He was incensed that they were still here, sitting ducks, inviting an attack from their enemies, the Repho's client regime, the Azueto gang and its allied cartels.

  “Come inside, you and the girl. You’ve exposed us,” said the officer.

  “Why do you think it’s safer under the tent? Are you some kind of idiot? Don’t you see they want to destroy us?” Arthur asked.

  “Not while we are all together inside. They don’t dare.”

  “That’s stupid. Do you think David will avenge you? Do you think they fear anything?”

  “Yes. They fear themselves. They fear what they don’t know.”

  “Well, I prefer to fight and defend myself. Give me your arms. I can take care of the two of us,” said Arthur. That was all that counted. Take care of yourself and your loved ones.

  “Come back under the tent or we’ll be forced to restrain you,” answered the officer.

  “I don’t think you dare try.”

  “We have no choice. That is the order. We are not to fight.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m not sitting here passive because you can’t or won’t fight.”

  The officer signalled back under the tent with a glance. Five of the Brigada came jogging out and surrounded the rock. The people under the tent jostled and spilled out from underneath to get a view of the proceedings. Arthur pulled the blade from his shoe and clambered to his feet on the rock. Holding one hand up, menacing with the blade between fingers, he turned and faced the soldiers. One by one, they unslung their contraband M-85 light duty launchers, Repho made, with sniper sights, from their shoulders and carefully unchecked the safeties. Carolina backed away beyond the circle of the soldiers surrounding the rock. Her hand covered her mouth, stifling shock, as she retreated. Nobody came out to comfort her. She turned and looked at Arthur. His eyes were darting, his face a mass of anxious muscles. If he had to die he was ready.

  A wail broke out from the tent. The old lady in the scarf cried out in a torrent of sing song entreaty, dancing in a herky jerky motion out to where the soldiers and Arthur stood their ground.

  “Ta tó. Ta tó. Bayamo agwé. Santo poroso amen. Miselicordia,” she wailed. All eyes were trained on her, as if in the patter and dance there was some sort of rescue, a solution to the refugee’s plight and long suffering.

  “Palopobre y tobaina poliones. Amensantaevelia oyemé,” she wailed, her eyes cast upwards to the sky.

  For Arthur it was insult added to injury, the woman’s macabre song and dance stealing his thunder. For a second the soldiers were not sure what to do, but they held their stances, rifles trained on Arthur, a few turning to see the old woman’s approach. Meanwhile, the refugees, realizing the import of the moment, pushed forward a few steps as if impelled to face an invisible force field.

  The beach was long and hot. The white sand stretched down to the brown tidal mud rippled by the receding water. The old man on his side, behind his field of vision, just his hairy, bare legs visible and the neatly pressed blue Bermuda shorts, mumbled something, and then the woman took her hand away. He ran across the hot sand, his bare, brown feet blurring.

  “Look at him go,” said the old man, carrying the bag. “That’s Arthur,” said the woman. The water was cold, but he didn’t care. The salt stung his eyes as he fell face down and held his breath, waiting to see if they’d come and save him.

  Now it was dark. It was the spring in that year and the old man with the hairy legs was gone, but Ben was there and Corrag had the little girl. He’d jumped bail and fled the Repho’s jurisdiction. Ben wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t saying he had to leave. The little girl was there, Hera, and they were in the basement of the house in Toronto and it was the little girl’s birthday, and he was making a card with her with the construction paper from the pile in the closet; he was thinking about jail time -- eight to twenty was the minimum, the lawyer had said, if he turned Repho witness, an informant. He hated the old man, the Repho judge, with his scowling fat face and the bot guards he couldn’t even hate in the Nassau County facility run by Cedar Crest, which was still owned in those days by Hufftalent. Corrag came down the stairs that dark spring and flipped on the light so he could see her face. She was crying. He could smell the tears, the salt of her skin and the running mascara, as she held him and told him he had to run. So he did. He ran across the country to the high rocky lands, avoiding city centers, malls, even traffic lights. He’d gone to the dogs. The dogs howling. That was freedom. This was his moment.

  Arthur jumped, swinging, at the line of soldiers. A small man with eyes slitted in fear fired at him. A bullet caught Arthur’s shoulder, shredding bone and muscle. He was down to one arm. But he cut away at the man with the left, slicing cheek and forehead, mounting him until he dropped the rifle and twisted, turning in a fetal pose. Arthur grabbed the gun and ran up the hill like a wounded rabbit as the old woman wailed her poem of incantation, befuddling and blinding the pack of men who couldn’t see into the sun’s fierce light, shielding Arthur as he ran.

  Over the hill ahead, he saw what at first seemed to be mesquite bushes that had broken free, unmoored from gravity, floating over the ground at him. He thought that he was dreaming, until he raised the gun in the one hand, pulled the stock against his left shoulder and began firing, not trusting that the dream was benign. But there was fire back -- green, spiked guns flashing heat, slinging hot metal past his zigzagging head. Then he saw that they had glassed domes enclosing circuitry, electricity snapping around the domes. There were hundreds of them floating forward along the entire horizon towards the camp. The bot battalion, the Mexican cavalry they had feared, was here and closing in for real. Caught between the bots and their assigned enemies, the greatest danger to Arthur was the crossfire establishing its insistent, deadly rhythm. He went to ground, burrowing with his hips to get behind a low hump of rock and brush.

  H
e smelled the mineral salts of the dirt. Or was it blood? The fingers of his useless arm clung to the rocks and clods, holding up what was left of his strength. Blood spurted. The earth lapped it up eagerly, sucking with its myriad tongues. The bots were blind to him, as if he had been swallowed. He could leave them to go by, but he couldn’t resist the urge to stand and crush one of the glass-domed monsters. He stood clumsily and smashed at the thing before him with the rifle butt. The bot stopped and turned, swiveling unsteadily.

  It was his time. He saw what he had to do.

  Arthur dropped the rifle and reached with one good hand through the jagged glass. He grabbed the bot’s guts and pulled. The razor sharp wires slashed his wrist and sought, like the tongues of the earth, the root of his own warm mind. He could feel the probes, tentacles growing like cords of new-found strength in his arms and chest. He sat on the back of the bot, and it swivelled, responding to his physical weight and raw mental input. He thought: “Fire. Fire away. At your brothers.” He swivelled again and pumped rapid pulses of molten metal. Arthur’s new mind, melded with the bot’s own personless intelligence, had committed to the fight against the shrill, unfeeling swarm.

  Chapter Twelve -- December 21, 2072

  Rio Cintamaria,

  Yavapais Territory

  The children played under the shade of the large madroña tree. The branches hung low over the pool. Leaping fish in the flickering, refracted light went for swarms of insects hovering above the water. The childen, Hera and the twins, Zeda and Volde, competed to see who could anticipate and catch the eager fish, staring at the roiling water with fixed, intense expressions.

  “Look at them," said Corrag. She loved the way they could entertain themselves for hours, but she still felt the need to ensure their safety from the many dangers, so many in this unfamiliar world of village and wilderness they had settled in.

  “It’s great,” said Ben, sitting up by her on the clump of grass in the clearing. The sun passed over them, and the wind blew the clouds swiftly beyond. His face was gray and grizzled. He was midway in his passage, comfortable in the world, not as pressured to reach some spot where he could rest from the currents in his mind. Volde dove and splashed. A fish barely escaped his grasp in the flash of an instant before it disappeared back into the water. The others laughed and cheered as he climbed back up the bank, chattering excitedly.