"You can teleport?"
She imagined him standing beside her, laughing, nudging her elbow and needling her like it wasn't really real.
"How far? Bet you can't reach that mountain."
"I can blow that mountain up," she whispered, to no one, to herself. Her hands rested unconsciously on her belly. Where the last piece of Ravi lived, now.
"Istanbul, then. Can you teleport to Istanbul?"
She smiled. The lepers flickered around her like dogs twitching in their sleep. How much had she lost, in the battle for control? That was a night land, and perhaps she'd never know. Energy fired in the dark spaces of the mind, hard to remember now, but leaving her buzzing like a live wire.
At first they had knelt, as if in worship of a god, but she swiftly corrected that. Now they stood like soldiers. She was all too aware of the people they had been. Those parts of themselves, like the flickers of light in her father's eyes as he hurled her to safety in Mongolia, still remained. It was in bringing them to the fore, and giving them some measure of control over their chaotic skins, that she had earned their obedience.
So they stood to attention. She had saved them, after all, from the hell of themselves.
"Goddess number one," Ravi whispered. "Super primo ultimate lady."
She snickered. That was one of his things, maybe from geek video game culture, maybe just something he'd made up.
"All your base are belong to us," she whispered back, a video game reference from a time before she was born. He used to wear a T-shirt with that printed on the front, proudly a geek long after being a geek wasn't even a thing. It had kept him alive, though, while everyone else was dead.
"Spiderman had it right," he said, the ghost of him, though he wasn't really there, she knew that. "With great power."
"Comes great respiration, yes, I know."
He chuckled. Another thing. "Great perspiration."
"Great aspiration."
"My favorite," he said, and kissed her on the cheek. His touch was cold, just like his cheek had been in the Alps bunker. Cold forever.
"My White Rabbit," she breathed.
Then he was gone, or perhaps the moment was gone, or the sense of him in her mind was gone. She knew she was alone again, despite the twelve circled around her. How long had passed? Not long.
She became aware of a low drone, buzzing in on her from above. She looked up, and saw the Beechcraft up above, buzzing and arcing. Just minutes ago she'd been up there too, but that felt like another lifetime now, so long ago. Up there was Peters, still watching down through his belly-mounted camera.
That amused her. She gave him a grin, waved, then blew a kiss.
Ravi's voice surged again in her head, just for this. "Conqueror of Hell," he whispered. "Ishtar, who broke down the doors of damnation and waged the dead against the living."
She laughed, and then he was gone again.
In his absence, she reached up, augmented by her circle of twelve. The energy coming off them filled her up like light in a lens. In a second she homed in on Peters, sensing things about him at a level of detail like she'd never felt before.
She felt the fear he always wore beneath his surface of calm. The love he felt for her, like the daughter he and his Abigail had never had. Pride and worry, mixed into a deep tangle of emotions that even he didn't really understand.
Then resolution.
She laughed, as she felt him strap on a pack, and open the plane door again, and jump out. A second later his parachute opened; a billowing white cloud that got caught in the wind and sent reeling.
She blinked herself over to where he would land. Her lepers blinked with her. She looked up as he came down, and landed in the snow, and looked at her with wonder, awe, and glory in his eyes.
"Anna. My God."
"Goddess will do," she said, and smiled.
He just stared, at her and her twelve disciples, while the parachute skittered over the snow in the stiff wind. "Are you?"
She shrugged. A moment passed, then he lurched forward, pushing aside her lepers to wrap his arms round her in perhaps the tightest embrace she'd ever had.
"Never do that again," he said fiercely into her ear. "Or, do it, but warn me first."
"Sure thing, Dad," she said, laughing, but that had a far bigger impact than she'd expected.
He began to shake. He held her closer and tried to bury the emotion, as he always had since Abigail died. It opened a door she hadn't ever considered, but that had been there all the time. Dad. And why not, one more on top of the pile after her real father, and Cerulean, and Amo? It was what Peters had always wanted, after all, and she was proud for him to think of her that way. She patted his back while he struggled with his pride enough to pull away under control.
"Young lady," he said at last, looking into her eyes while the Beechcraft above entered a steep dive that would, in less than a minute, result in a beautiful fireball against a rocky mountain flank. "What have you done?"
* * *
It got cold in the mountains.
"You could have jumped out with some jackets," Anna teased.
"I followed my hero," Peters replied, returning now to his deadpan delivery, though the twelve lepers still plainly made him uncomfortable. "You leapt with not even a parachute."
She smiled. That was a strange thing.
"If you'll let them carry you, we can be out of the mountains in hours."
Peters frowned hard.
So they hiked. They weren't wearing the right shoes. Probably they would freeze to death when night came, if it weren't for the heat fuming off her lepers. They had traversed only one mountain slope in hours. Anna could have jumped it in a second, perhaps two, tweaking the power that now seemed to live inside her, as accessible as a faucet, but it was better to walk with Peters.
They both needed it.
She'd tried to explain. He'd stopped being frustrated that he couldn't do what she did, and just come to accept this new ability of hers.
"So you blink?" he asked.
"I think, a twist," Anna answered, as if that made it any clearer. "Things just line up. I can feel them already, like a fifth limb, like I'm just making my hand into a fist. It's another muscle."
Peters nodded along. It was a lot to swallow.
"And these creatures." He gestured to the lepers flanking them like an honor guard. "What are they, really?"
Anna shrugged. She didn't really know any more than him. "Just people. Accidents. Like the ocean, like the demons, just different. I can see bits of them peeking through at times, but they're such a jumble. This one thinks about a movie he saw once, but the image is so degraded, then the memory flips to this other one, like they're sharing it, or eating it, and it goes down then something else comes up to replace it. They're feeding on themselves somehow, eating each other, but the fuel doesn't run out. It feels like, when they get done they just start up again."
Peters nodded. His breath steamed in the air. Already the sky was darkening, and they'd have to hunker down to rest some time soon. Anna didn't relish the thought of cuddling up to the lepers for warmth, but if they weren't going to jump their way out…
"Like perpetual motion machines," Peters said. "I have an interest in these."
Anna looked over at him. "You do?"
"Yes. I have many interests, Anna. I am an old man, after all."
"You're not even forty-five."
He snorted. "Well, I feel old. I used to build them, really as a hobby. My Abigail laughed at me. 'Water will not flow uphill', she would tell me, while she was laughing, and I kept building anyway. 'It is friction that is our problem' she said. And I would laugh then, and ask her about the ocean. Where do they obtain their energy from? They go and go, and they do not eat, but still they continue. The same is true of us. We eat little, but last a long time. I once went a month without eating, and I could have continued longer. My experiments."
Anna smiled. Peters rarely spoke this much, certainly not about his time with Abi
gail.
"She was a good match for you, I think. You kept each other sane for ten years."
He chuckled. "Yes, I think so. She did not want children, and every day that broke my heart, but she was a good woman. She did not deserve the end she received."
"She died in your arms. She died free."
He nodded.
Anna let a long moment pass.
"Cynthia is single, last I heard."
The look on his face made her laugh out loud. "You are not serious. I do not think you are suggesting I, and Cynthia, become a couple?"
Anna laughed again. It felt good, even if they were in the mountains humping through snow, with her feet soaked through and the wind picking up. "She's a handsome woman. She knows how to sow a field."
His expression became distraught. "She is twenty years my senior. Thirty, perhaps, Anna!"
"Perpetual motion helps with a lot. Less friction."
He jawed the air emptily, so offended he couldn't think of a sufficient reply, ultimately settling on, "You are a terrible matchmaker."
She laughed.
"I do not think it is funny," he grumbled. "It is my life."
"Maybe, but you shouldn't be alone any more," she said, then stopped, because that made her think about Ravi. Peters sensed the change in tone at once. He was good at that.
"Neither will you be," he said. "We will both be well. I feel this."
That was nice.
They trudged on in silence for a time. One of the lepers slipped and that was good for a half-hearted laugh.
We will both be well, Anna repeated under her breath. We will both be well.
* * *
After a cold night curled up together amongst the lepers, and half of another day trudging through the cold and snow, Peters relented.
"Let your servants carry me. This is unacceptable."
Anna rounded them up and had them lift him carefully. She had them lift her too, because they were better at jumping than her. Then she had them begin.
"Oh God," Peters exclaimed, as the first jump flung them fifty feet forward, then the second came fast on its heels, and the third. "I will be sick."
"Sorry," said Anna, and slowed the pace.
He sighed in relief.
They jumped, had a pause of a second, and jumped again.
"Actually, better to go fast," Peters said. "I will close my eyes."
Anna grinned, and revved the lepers up to full speed. Control of them came naturally now, like turning a dial on the wall, like leaning out to pull a catamaran into the wind. The world flickered by in a blur; up and down, the skyline jumping, the white snow changing angles.
In a few hours, perhaps, the mountains were behind them. Peters was actually asleep, like a babe in arms. She slowed her little army, and returned to walking along a road, carrying the sleeping Peters like a king on a chaise longue.
This was Romania, she supposed. She'd never been here before. There were patchwork fields full of pink wildflowers, and lots of panoramic hills.
She found a nice-looking red-roofed house, and broke her way in. She had the lepers set Peters down on a sofa, then packed them into the garage, settling them down with the door closed. They liked to be in the dark. While he slept she went to the kitchen, where she found a few edible things: what looked like tinned anchovies in bitter-tasting olive oil, crackers that crumbled to dust but were at least calories, some dried lasagna sheets and a jar of tomato sauce.
She cooked the lasagna sheets on a camping gas fire rummaged out of a closet, served with sparkling bottled water that still had a hint of fizz. She woke Peters to a feast and they ate by candlelight.
"Ravi was a good man," Peters said.
Anna smiled. It was about time for this, a proper wake. So they talked about Ravi, and grief. Peters shared stories about Abigail that he'd never told her before. Not only their best moments, but their worst too. The fights they had, the moments he'd thought she might leave one day and he'd never see her again. One time Peters had thought to surprise her with a bed full of roses, a wonderfully romantic gesture, and as soon as she'd seen it she just laughed and laughed and couldn't stop laughing. Afterward she'd never been able to explain why it struck her so, but she did call him a 'Dear man' and after they'd cleared the bed of roses and thorns, they put it to good use.
Anna blushed. Peters chuckled. "Why? You are a grown woman now. Soon to be a mother."
She blushed more.
She shared the things about Ravi that had always annoyed her; what a pushover he was, his lack of ambition, the annoying way he always had of just getting calmer when she got worked up in a fight, and was surprised to find herself crying halfway through.
"It's good," Peters said. "To make you clean."
They ate crumbled biscuits and sucked a few hard candies she found in a rusted tin. Still good.
Three days passed like that, during which they did nothing but eat, and talk, and recover while taking slow walks around the house, looking at the distant mountains. It was easy enough to forget the lepers in the garage, and with them contained, it didn't feel like there was any rush. There was no place they had to be right then, and nothing urgent they could do to help Lucas with his various challenges. It was nice to play at this act of domesticity; the ritual of bidding each other good night, as they each retired to their rooms; to bid each other good morning and sit to breakfast together like being a family, having a real life, like being back in New LA.
After the three days were up, Peters showed her the radio.
It had been built from spare parts scavenged from nearby houses.
"Where did this come from?" Anna asked.
Peters gave a kind smile. "I made it. It is time, Anna."
That unbalanced the careful equilibrium they'd built. "What do you mean? Time for what?"
"Time to go home. The real home."
She looked at the radio, and understood, even though she didn't like it. There was a resistance there, a kind of dream that maybe they could just stay here and live like this forever, but of course that was only a pleasant fiction. They had to go.
"You built this at night," she said, not a question. "While I was asleep."
He nodded. "I do not need much sleep, Anna. You know this about me. Yet you do. You have lost a lot. You have a baby coming. This rest has healed you very much. But it is time."
She sighed. It was funny to imagine him sneaking out at night, smuggling these materials in by flashlight, assembling them piece by piece. It was a kind of betrayal, but not really. In truth it was a kindness.
"We have to go back," she said.
He just smiled. They both knew it was true. Three days was long enough.
He turned the radio on. It took a little while, tuning to the frequency for Istanbul, boosting the gain enough to get over the mountains, but at last they got through. The person on the other end came through crackling, but clear enough to hear. They fetched Helen.
The news Helen told them changed everything.
The remaining eight bunkers had been bombed.
Every shield had been taken out, leaving the people there trapped and helpless on the line, just like Gap and Brezno. A bomb had also fallen on Istanbul two days ago, a large-scale cluster bomb that completely destroyed the airfield and wiped out almost everyone who'd been above ground. Some seven hundred people.
And more bombs were falling.
Peters and Anna listened in stunned silence.
They'd left the bunker behind, organizing a rag-tag evacuation to Istanbul; an enormous refugee train of the sick, injured, and mad, only able to travel within the confines of the crater on the line.
Peters looked at Anna, and she looked back at him, as Helen went on listing losses. There was a choice there to feel guilt, that maybe they should have returned faster, done something earlier, but there was no point in that now. Nothing they could have done would have changed this, but still, it soured the three days they'd spent indulging a fantasy.
It
also raised a new threat, one only hinted at on the line and in all the literature she'd heard about the days of the apocalypse. A shadow SEAL that brought the apocalypse about in the beginning. Someone that even now was trying to eradicate not only her own people, but every other survivor in the world, the bunkers included.
"We have to go," Peters said. "Now."
Anna was already pulling the lepers out of the garage.
20. FORTY YEARS
Lara made her people move.
The pyre still burned before her. It would burn through the night and into the next day, a new symbol for the country and its people. She stood and watched the flames while her people prepared.
The net she'd cast over them hummed with her anger, controlling them just as Witzgenstein's lusts, petty grievances and bigotry had controlled them before. Now their minds had changed. She didn't care what stories they told themselves, about why they were doing these things. Perhaps they'd just changed their minds. An epiphany had struck them all.
She turned, while they bustled in and out of the White House. It wasn't what it once had been; not sacred, not glorious, not inspirational. Witzgenstein's death in the flames had wiped that out. There was no foundation stone here to build a new civilization upon. There was nothing. There was shame, and a new collective guilt, bigger than the guilt of manifest destiny.
Had Crow been the last of his people?
The wicked work was done. So let America rest.
She watched her people work. They knew where the stores were; everything Witzgenstein had stolen from the Strategic Reserves before she'd put them to the torch. Trailers full of food, good gasoline, clothes, clean water, everything they would need for the months to come.
And the months would come. Years.
After a time, Lara moved. It hurt to walk on burned soles, with burned skin pulling tight. She went into the White House, where nothing really remained. No clothes for her, no memories but misery. She walked the halls, looking into sad staterooms that passed by in a blur of elegant decoration and lost dreams.
The shining city on a hill.
The Last Mayor Box Set 3 Page 52
